I am helping organize the CLIP conference Being Good at Doing Good: Safeguarding Yourself and Your Charity in a Complex World Feb. 22-23, 2010 in Toronto.. It promises to be a very exciting and affordable two day conference with many…
Here is a copy of a report on terrorist financing entitled Financial Action Task Force Report on Terrorist Financing
From the basic to the indepth there are numerous resources on the web that can help Canadian charities avoid money laundering and terrorism. BASIC Charities in the International Context by the Charities Directorate of CRA RCMP National Security Information…
Here is an interesting report from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on COMBATING THE ABUSE OF NON-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS International Best Practices from 2002. It highlights the importance of transparency in non-profit sectors and financial management in thwarting abuse of…
Here is a sample fraud policy from the UK Charity Finance Directors’ Group. While Canadian non-profits and charities do not need to have a fraud avoidance policy this example may be of use to some and certainly being aware of…
Here is an interesting booklet from the CSAE and RBC on Preventing_fraud_in_Not_for_Profit_Organizations.pdf
Here are copies of the handouts for a number of recent presentations that I have delivered for the Charity Law Information Program (CLIP) *Charity Checklist: Managing Legal Compliance Risks; *Charity Compliance: A Primer for Boards; *Foreign Activities Guidance and Dealing…
Cultural property is one type of gift that a donor can make to a charity. Certain certified cultural property has certain additional benefits associated with its donation. In the CRA Guide Gifts and Income Tax 2009 CRA outlines some of…
Here is a copy of my presentation CRA’s Fundraising Guidelines –Legal, Ethical and Practical Issues A presentation to the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) GTA Congress 2009 in Toronto Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP in Toronto,…
An article I wrote entitled “CRA Guidance on Fundraising: AN OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE FUNDRAISING PRACTICES IN THE SECTOR” was published in PERSPECTIVES ON CANADIAN PHILANTHROPY by the Offord Group. The publication can be downloaded from Mark Blumberg is a…
I am often asked “When should a Canadian charity not issue a “official donation receipt” (tax receipt)?” First of all Canadian charities do not have to issue tax receipts – however, if they are going to issue official donation receipts,…
I recently attended the Interaction Forum held in Washington, D.C. on July 6-9, 2009. The Interaction Forum is the largest gathering of US ngos involved with development. I met some very interesting people and learned quite a lot. Here are…
Valuation is complicated but don’t rely on the donor to tell you the value or use some optimistic number. If a charity provides an official donation receipt for a donation of pharmaceuticals to a donor that charity is obliged to…
You can find the Nantel v. The Queen (TCC) decision in French at According to the headnote it involved the valuation of a donation to a charity of a number of pieces of art that were bought by the…
An article entitled Jewish Ethical Perspective to American Taxation by Kenneth H. Ryesky provides a Jewish law perspective on the US tax system. Many of the points made here would be equally applicable to the Canadian tax and registered charity…
CRA’s Guidance “Fundraising by Registered Charities” is in two separate documents namely the main guidance at and (entitled Additional information on Guidance CPS-028, Fundraising by Registered Charities). These documents are hyperlinked together and you can go back and…
In Maréchaux, F.M.E. v. The Queen the case revolved around whether F. Max E. Maréchaux, was entitled to a charitable donation tax credit. Maréchaux is a lawyer at the law firm Miller Thomson LLP. http://www.millerthomson.com/index.cfm?cm=Employee&ce=details&primaryKey=16425 CRA had disallowed the…
According to Statistics Canada total charitable donations in 2007 were $8,648,660,000 ($8.6Billion) and in 2008 $8,189,280,000 ($8.1B). I am not great at math but that seems to indicate a drop of about $450 million dollars. That is only part of…
Russel is an art donation case. However, it is more than that. It might be the beginning of the end of the abusive charity gifting tax shelters in Canada. This is now the fourth in a line of cases that…
The first chapter of the online toolkit covers charities and terrorism. The next chapters will deal with Safeguarding charity funds; Safeguarding charities – people, property, reputation; and a case study archive (good practice examples from the sector for all chapters)…
The Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee has produced a charity bulletin entitled Charitable Fundraising: Tips for Directors and Trustees. In that bulletin they discuss fundraising requirements for charities that operate in Ontario. Here is the text of the bulletin: Information…
Interesting article entitled Charities Face Greater Threat From Ponzi Schemes Than Lost Investments The long and the short is that a charity that received a donation from a person who had obtained those funds either illicitly or the return on…
Here is a good page of links on the CRA website entitled “What role do provincial and territorial governments play in the regulation of charities?”. Also see “Constitutional Jurisdiction Over Charities”.
Here is the Charity Law Information Program (CLIP) presentation Strengthening Governance, Ethical Standards and Financial Controls. Production of this workshop and materials was made possible by a financial contribution from the Canada Revenue Agency. — Mark Blumberg is a lawyer…