Through the Charity Law Information Program I will be delivering over 30 online webinars over the next two months. They are priced at $25 per webinar. The webinars are listed at www.capacitybuilders.ca/clip Here is a coupon code xq42k that…
My CanadianCharity channel on Twitter is growing rapidly. I have 117 people following me (and most are not even family) You can access it at It covers legal, ethical and practical issues with charities in Canada. A great way…
In 2009 I attended the Interaction Forum held in Washington, D.C. The Interaction Forum is the largest gathering of US and international NGOS involved with international development. I met some very interesting people and learned quite a lot. One of…
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
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…
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 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…
Here is an OP ED piece by the finance director of Oxfam UK. There is also a response from the UK TaxPayers’ Alliance in the comments section. From The Times November 27, 2009 “Transparency and accountability are crucial for…
Can a Canadian non-profit under 149(1)(l) earn a profit. Does it matter if the profit is intentional and/or will be used to further the organization’s purposes? LANGIND E DOCNUM 2009-0337311E5 AUTHOR Zannese, Lisa DESCKEY 25 RATEKEY 2 REFDATE 091105 SUBJECT…
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…
Carol Goar in her article “All dressed up and nowhere to volunteer” asks some interesting questions about why we are not adequately using volunteers. Hopefully the article will intensify the discussion on the point. Goar: All dressed up and nowhere…
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…