Canadian Charities

Researching Canadian charities is a difficult and frustrating undertaking. Here is the short course in starting an investigation of a Canadian charity.

To determine if a charity is registered by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), go to the Charities Listings page. The most useful filing of a charity is the T3010 form. This is the annual information filing that must be completed each year.

I wish that a quick read of a charity’s financial statements or its T3010 annual return or a calculation of its disbursement quota would tell one about the real administration and fund-raising costs and the real effectiveness and importance of a charity’s work. Usually, some research is in order – read the charity’s annual report, review its website, review its T3010 and search on director, donor, and recipient names, it may be enlightening to see the relationships exposed by this type of search. Then, if you have any concerns, call the charity and see what they have to say.

The Globe and Mail each week provides a short profile of a major donor and the charity that received the donation as well as discusses the donor’s motivation in making the donation. This makes searching the charity name in the Globe and Mail worthwhile. Searching The Toronto Star is also a good idea as their reporter, Kevin Donovan, writes about the worst examples of misdeeds by charities in Canada.