Ghost Foundation

We’re a non-profit organisation building open source technology for modern publishing

Ghost was founded in April 2013 by John O’Nolan & Hannah Wolfe, with a mission to create the best open source tools for independent journalists and writers across the world, and have a real impact on the future of online media.

Today Ghost powers an incredible range of websites; from personal bloggers to large teams of writers and editors at some of the largest organisations in the world. We’ve built a sustainable business around a free core application, funded by a premium managed-service to run it on.

Behind the scenes, we’re just a group of weird, fun-loving humans who enjoy experimenting with new technology. We believe in creating as much freedom in the world as we can, and everything we do is based on that core principle.

We set Ghost up as non-profit foundation so that it would always be true to its users, rather than shareholders or investors. Our legal constitution ensures that the company can never be bought or sold, and one hundred percent of our revenue is reinvested into the product and the community.

As a public organisation we also believe in being transparent and accountable for everything we do, so we publish our live financial data for all to see.

All of our company metrics are public

Go to ghost.org/about to check them out.

It’s a sustainable open source model.

The more people use Ghost, the more demand there is for our paid service, the more revenue we make, the more great people we can hire to work on Ghost full-time, the better the software gets, the more people use Ghost… and so on. It’s a virtuous cycle that allows us to produce open source software and release it for free.

This sustainable funding model means that we don’t rely on any external donations or grant funding. The Ghost Foundation is completely self-sufficient, and is able to employ a wonderful team.

The Ghost Foundation team

We’ve been a fully remote company since 2013, long before it was common. We’ve never had an office in the history of the business. These days we span 5 continents, 16 nationalities and 15 languages.