That's a good, but separate question. My point is an at cost registrar probably saves people 10% on a .org, which doesn't meaningfully increase access... If you can't afford $10/year, $9/year isn't really affordable either.
To your question though, I think PIR actually contracts out the operation of the registry to Affilias. I don't know what the current rate is, but before they renegotiated, they were paying about $3/domain to Affilias [1] based on a reported payment of $33M on just under 11 million domains.
I don't really know where the rest of the money goes. There were a lot of questions when PIR tried to sell .ORG to private equity in 2020, but I don't know if there was much follow up after the deal got quashed.
PIR is owned by the Internet Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit which does a bunch of other stuff, like running the IETF. Most of the Internet Society's revenue comes from selling .org domains.
It doesn't. It could hypothetically cost PIR $0. 501(c) organizations are not prohibited from collecting and spending profits, they are prohibited from unreasonably distributing such earnings to private shareholders and individuals (see https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/eotopicc90.pdf).
To your question though, I think PIR actually contracts out the operation of the registry to Affilias. I don't know what the current rate is, but before they renegotiated, they were paying about $3/domain to Affilias [1] based on a reported payment of $33M on just under 11 million domains.
I don't really know where the rest of the money goes. There were a lot of questions when PIR tried to sell .ORG to private equity in 2020, but I don't know if there was much follow up after the deal got quashed.
[1] https://domainnamewire.com/2016/11/14/org-sticks-afilias-bac...