Single-Copy Promotions Guidebook—Canadian Newspapers

Charitable Donations

A newspaper may decide to donate a portion of the consumer’s single-copy purchase price to a charitable organization and use this as an incentive to generate single-copy sales.

A newspaper may not use revenue from newspaper sales to generate funds for Newspapers in Education.

Pricing

When a single issue of the newspaper is sold where the consumer is informed that a portion of the purchase price will be donated to a charity, the amount paid by the consumer must be no less than one cent plus the amount presented to the consumer as a donation.

See also Rule C 5.7 Sponsored Subscriptions and Rule C 10.1 Paid Circulation.

Promotional Material

All promotional material must:

• State the selling price of the newspaper.
• Indicate the specific amount of the donation.
• Reflect a qualifying price

Example—Charitable Donations

Reporting

Circulation generated from the sale of single issues inclusive of a charitable donation is classified as single copy on the ABC Publisher’s Statement.

Canadian Publisher's Statements delineate between circulation sold at 50 percent or more of basic prices and circulation sold at less than 50 percent of basic prices.

The price classification for charitable donation sales is based on the net value of the newspaper (the offer price less the amount of the donation).

• If the net value of the newspaper is 50 percent or more of basic prices, the circulation is included in Paragraph 1A.
  
  
• If the net value of the newspaper is less than 50 percent of basic prices, the circulation is included in Paragraph 1B, with further disclosure in Paragraph 1G.

In Paragraph 2, the circulation is classified in the proper reporting zone based on where the copies were purchased by the consumer.

Paragraph 8 includes a description of all charitable donation programs including the price at which the copies were sold, the amount of the donation, the name of the charity and the quantity of copies sold.