I wish I did not have to write this article about the Canadian rules around international philanthropy and foreign activities but unfortunately, a small group of people has been constantly complaining about direction and control for 20 years. It is…
If you have followed the WE Charity scandal one of the major concerns is the lack of transparency with Canadian registered charities. That is not to say that a charity cannot be transparent, but the legally required transparency for registered…
CRA released today the updated guidance CG-002, Canadian registered charities carrying on activities outside Canada. Essentially, this guidance deals with Canadian charities conducting foreign activities. About 5000 Canadian registered charities conduct foreign activities every year. Over the next 10 years…
Here is a description of the presentation on November 24, 2020: Lunch ’N Learn Panel: WE Have a Problem Jaya Mootoo , Ann Rosenfield, MBA, CFRE , Hawa Y. Mire, MA , Mark Blumberg, LLB, LLM, TEP Description:…
Mark will be presenting on November 19, 2020 at the CIMA Canada Conference on “Dealing with Ethical Dilemmas: at Work and Beyond”. CIMA is the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants® (CIMA) which was founded in 1919 and is the world’s…
Our firm has been using online tools for over 10 years – primarily webinars. In 2018, we moved to providing paid online courses dealing with charity and non-profit legal compliance and risk management to the non-profit and charity sector as…
The Canada Gazette on October 17, 2020 published the names of over 170 Canadian registered charities that had requested voluntary revocation. Here is the list. The last voluntary revocations that happened were on March 28, 2020. The last “failure to file”…
The Charities Directorate of CRA sent out an email today to their electronic mailing list. The full text is below and our comments are in [brackets and italics]. If you want the boring stuff from CRA then you should definitely…
For almost a year now (long before COVID) CRA has not revoked one single charity as a result of audit! Admittedly CRA typically in a year revokes only 20-30 charities for all sorts of problems from inappropriate receipting, terrorism, lack…
A recent public opinion poll by Proof Communications, which runs the CanTrust index, dealing with trust shows a 6% decline for the non-profit and charity sector from May to September 2020. Clearly having over 2 months of very negative WE…
When CRA audits charities they typically send a long questionnaire to be filled in by the charity on many different issues. With some questionnaires, it is clear that they have a particular interest in a certain area such as foreign…
In this New York Times article published today entitled “Steve Bannon Is Charged With Fraud in We Build the Wall Campaign” it has shocking revelations about a fundraising campaign in the US. Hat tip to Paul Alof for retweeting it.…
Every year we do a 3-hour course on transparency and the T3010. This year there has been a lot of interest in transparency around charities. On August 5, 2020, at 1 PM we will have our course Transparency in the…
Here is my Written Submission for the Pre-Budget Consultations in Advance of the Upcoming Federal Budget on Transparency and Accountability in the Non-profit and Charity Sector. I provide 10 recommendations and the top two are: Recommendation 1: That the Federal…
We have recently added 2 new full-day courses namely Fundamentals of Running a Canadian Charitable Organization/Operating Charity and Fundamentals of Running a Private or Public Foundation in Canada. These are in-depth courses which will help those who run operating charities…
CRA has just published its plan for the resumption of full activities. Here is one pertaining to the Legislation and Policy Branch (Charities). My comments and concerns are below. Highlights are: “Legislative Policy and Regulatory Affairs Branch (LPRAB) (July –…
Here is our Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Legal Checklist for Working with Intermediaries in Canada 2020. It will be of help to Canadian registered charities that work with/hire non-charities such as businesses, non-profits or individuals to carry out work for the…
In this brief note, we try to suggest ten steps for a simplified contractor arrangement between a Canadian charity and a group in Canada that is not a charity (the “Intermediary”) implementing a project for the Canadian charity in Canada. …
We have just prepared a new course on Canadian Charities Working with Non-Charities in Canada. Here is information on the new course and how to register. I was quite disappointed that certain organizations have misrepresented the ability of Canadian charities…
I wrote to the BC Financial Services Authority on May 4, 2020, asking for some clarifications relating to their Information Bulletin entitled “Charitable Donation of Life Insurance Policies in British Columbia” which we covered here. On May 8, 2020, they…
The Guardian recently had an article “UK charity failed to safeguard aid worker killed in Syria – report“. The article deals with Alan Henning, a UK volunteer who went to Syria and was captured and beheaded by ISIS. Here is the…
Every year less than 1% of Canadian registered charities identify in their T3010 receiving a life insurance policy for which they issued an official donation receipt. (See Schedule 5 to the Blumbergs Canadian Charity Sector Snapshot 2017). That being said…
We have written about 2 recent notices from the Ontario Public Guardian and Trustee (“PGT”) relating to restricted funds and the pandemic. These are Ontario PGT has issued a “Statement on Accessing Restricted Purpose Trust Funds Prior to Obtaining a Court…
We do regular updates of the portal CharityData.ca. Recently we just added more T3010 data including updated partial 2019 data and all of 2018 data. We are now using 2018 data for searches and there are about 84,000 charities on…