How we are funded, and why our rankings are not for sale.

The usefulness of a ranking depends entirely on who paid for it. Here is exactly where our money comes from, and the rule that keeps operators out of it.

The funding model

The Vitrine Retirement Index is free, and is funded by the Vitrine Seniors Housing Census, a national market-data product licensed to institutions such as operators, lenders, developers, and researchers. Families never pay, and the operators we rank never pay for their position. The model follows the firewall approach used by NIC MAP in the United States, where independent market data funds a service the operators cannot buy.

The firewall

No operator pays for placement, ranking position, or inclusion, in any form. This covers listing fees, featured placement, membership dues, sponsored content, and referral commissions. Operators may license the market data, but a participating operator sees aggregate figures plus its own submitted data only, never a competitor's granular position.

Governance

• The free consumer layer is never paywalled.
• The methodology says publicly what each province's score rests on, and it is open to challenge.
• No operator sits on, or is represented on, the board.
• Every funding source is disclosed.

Data and leads

We do not sell personal information, and we do not sell leads or referrals to operators. Aggregated, anonymized data informs industry research, and that use is disclosed to families at the point of intake. Demand-side data is released in aggregate only, with small-cell suppression and coarsened geography, so that no household or facility can be re-identified.