Update: AllSides was named one of the 2023 Most Fundable Companies® by Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, and featured in Entrepreneur Magazine. Watch our 5 minute presentation at the event where we were voted a crowd favorite.

Our Founders and Corporate Structure

AllSides Technologies, Inc. was co-founded by John Gable (Lean Right bias), Scott McDonald (Center bias) and Joan Blades (Left bias). As of November 2023, AllSides was owned by 28 different people, with the three co-founders maintaining majority ownership and control as the sole members of the Board of Directors.

AllSides Inc started in 2012, co-founded by Gable and McDonald. AllSides For Schools, a separate non-profit project of the Mediators Foundation (serving as the fiscal sponsor), was co-founded in 2015 by Gable, McDonald and Blades. The original AllSides Inc disbanded, and in 2016, AllSides Inc's assets, including AllSides.comMismatch.org, and its other products and technologies including its mobile application, were purchased by AllSides LLC.

In 2023, to support further growth and accept outside funding, AllSides LLC changed its company structure and legal name to AllSides Technologies, Inc., and named its three co-founders, Gable, McDonald and Blades, as the sole members of the Board of Directors. To align with and protect its mission, it was established as a Public Benefit Corporation ("a type of for-profit corporate entity whose goals include making a positive impact on society").

Also in 2023, the AllSides for Schools non-profit project expanded its mission beyond just schools to educating the mass market directly and by supporting mission aligned leaders and organizations, and therefore changed its name to AllSides Education Fund.

AllSides Technologies, Inc has the company name "AllSides" as a registered DBA ("doing business as").

Our Audience

Like other companies, we serve and are greatly financed by our audience, so the make-up of our audience is important. The AllSides audience is uniquely balanced. We regularly administer surveys on our website to discover the political bias of users and find that while the results typically fluctuate, our audience tends to represent an even balance of left, center and right users.

AllSides runs a user survey annually to better understand people that use our website. In December 2023, our survey found 28% left, 38% as “mixed” politically, and 33% right political balance among our users on the homepage. This balance has remained consistent throughout the years.

In addition, the 2023 survey found a virtually identical split among users identifying themselves as Democrats and Republicans, at 20% each. Forty-two percent of respondents were Independent, and 19% “something else.”

AllSides has consistently shown a very evenly balanced political audience that is unusual in the news media space. This balanced audience, and our reliance on balance as a core differentiator for our brand and business, means that we are financially rewarded for remaining balanced. Many news organizations would like to be balanced or less biased, but they make more money by catering to one side of the other. For AllSides, our mission, customer expectations and financial incentives all align.

Our Revenue Sources

AllSides primarily makes money through subscriptions and services.

Online subscriptions and donations accounted for 23% of AllSides revenue in 2022. While that used to be over half of our revenue, in 2022 most of our revenue came from a variety of client services in news, bias, education, dialogue and technology (72%). Our subscribers, donors and clients all expect us to remain true to our brand and promise of balance, so abandoning our mission would be very costly to us. To further protect our own balance, AllSides’ partners, clients and investors span the political spectrum.

Advertising accounted for a small amount of revenue – about 4% – in 2022. We apply our own advertising standards to prevent conflicts with our credibility and mission. This includes not permitting political advertisements on our website. We understand that advertising can be a major conflict of interest for media companies that seek to be balanced, factual, fair and credible since it rewards them for being sensationalist, biased and overly quick to publish. AllSides will never resort to clickbait, misinformation, or fake news to earn ad revenue. Users can view AllSides ad-free by becoming a Sustaining Member, and we encourage anyone to report inappropriate or political advertisements to us.

Our Business Model

AllSides’ business and funding model aligns with our social good mission. It encourages our team to prioritize quality, credibility and balance that supports our brand and a stronger democratic society, leading to more subscriptions and service revenue rather than instantaneous gratification and sensationalism that drive advertising dollars and extremism.

While AllSides does provide client services to partners and news organizations, our focus is always on the end consumer; we make money by providing services to others to advance our mission to help free people from filter bubbles so they can better understand the world – and each other.