Just look at their About page, which conflicts with much of the parent comment:

> international NGO

What does 'international' mean here and why do you mention it? About page: "nonprofit organisation registered in the Netherlands with ANBI (Public Benefit Organisation) status"

> ~1MM in income per year

They have a staff of over 30. They must spend much more than $1 million/year.

> In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation)

They list their top salaries on the About page, which ain't much: "The salaries of our five highest paid employees range from €69,000 to €108,000 per year." Fifth highest paid employee makes €69,000.

> directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors

The About page lists funders by name, as well as "Media partners".

> In exchange for the funding ... they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.

Could you provide a source for that? Here's what the About page says:

"Editorial Independence is essential to all aspects of the work we do. We work with donors who do not impose conditions that restrict our journalism."

And from another page:

"We offer a collaborative space where hyper-local outlets and freelance journalists can work alongside staff from globally-recognised media. We exist to foster experiments with new formats and we pay particular attention to fresh ways of framing complex issues that will capture public attention and challenge misconceptions."

https://www.lighthousereports.com/what-we-stand-for/

EDIT: How can people on HN care that much about the source, Lighthouse? Right now three users, not including the parent commenter, are motivated enough to promote the disinformation about Lighthouse that they downvoted a mostly factual, informative comment. (I don't care about the votes; they are just evidence.) Maybe there is something I don't know about Lighthouse?