I have been contacted by a small number of charities and individuals who are dealing with the issue of a board member donating to the freedom convoy and how to deal with it. This is a situation where an individual…
There have been many people wondering how COVID has affected the Canadian charity sector. On March 24, 2021, we released our first report which looked at 1676 registered charities. We released our second report on June 9, 2021, with 11,821 registered…
The US charity leader and commentator, Vu Le, recently wrote another thought-provoking article entitled “Reports of the nonprofit sector’s death are greatly exaggerated“. In it, he makes many cogent arguments as to why the “social enterprise or B corps or…
Recently Ontario passed Bill 9, Non-Profit Sector Appreciation Week Act, 2021. Now in Ontario, the third week in February is non-profit appreciation week. On the plus side, this could be a focal point for organizing some events that show appreciation…
Cryptocurrency has been in the news now for many years. While cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. have received a lot of attention, in my anecdotal experience, very little money has been provided to Canadian charities through cryptocurrency. We…
There are approximately 6,300 private foundations in Canada. Private foundations have been growing at a higher rate than any other type of Canadian registered charity. They have assets of around $100 Billion. Although there are some differences between a private…
The National Post recently had an article by Christopher Nardi “Charity sector worth $300B per year, but CRA audits have dropped four-fold since 2010“. It discusses the dramatic decline in CRA audits previously discussed on our blog at Dramatic changes…
We just launched a new course on fundraising regulation in Canada. Here is a description of the course: Many Canadian charities fundraise. In total fundraising brings in over $20 billion for Canadian charities every year. Through the dedicated work of…
CRA recently provided a redacted letter on “Whether an individual may claim a non-refundable tax credit on their final return for a gift by will, to a U.S. organization.” The letter has a good summary of how donations by Canadian…
It looks like Bill S-216, the Effective and Accountable Charities Act has passed the Senate and will now move to the House of Commons. It was formerly Bill S-222 but died when the Liberals called that very important 2021 Federal…
I was very pleased to see an article by Roger Colinvaux “Speeding Up Benefits to Charity: Donor Advised Fund and Foundation Reform“. This US article looks at the US charity system but in Canada, we are currently examining similar issues. …
I recently read on a blog with some statistics relating to the number of audits that the Charities Directorate of CRA was conducting each year. Frankly, I could not believe the numbers so I wrote to CRA to ask them…
In the case of Piett v Global Learning Group Inc., 2021 SKQB 232 the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench decided not to certify a class action on GLGI as there is already one in Ontario. Here is good coverage of the case…
CRA has information on its website about how Canadian registered charities must act within their legal objects and how those objects must be legally and exclusively charitable. Objects of a non-profit corporation are usually set out in the corporation’s constating…
The Ontario PGT recently published a page “Charities: making a complaint” explaining how to make a complaint about a charity. We have previously discussed the topic of complaining about charities here. Here is the full text of the PGT…
On October 19, 2021 I read the following from a newsletter of Imagine Canada: Imagine Canada supports increasing the disbursement quota to above 5% The disbursement quota consultations closed on September 30. In our submission, we recommended that the…
With the launch of the new Ontario Business Registry (OBR) in Ontario on October 19 you should obtain your company key. Also, those Ontario corporations who had annual returns due from May 15, 2021 through October 18 can file those…
Some Ontario corporations have provisions in their by-laws that allow for virtual meetings. This is particularly important during COVID. However, some have provisions that prohibit virtual meetings. The Ontario government has emergency provisions that allowed for virtual meetings for…
Here is Blumbergs’ Written Submission to the Department of Finance about the disbursement quota. As we note in the submission, we are firmly in favour of an increase in the disbursement quota. We so suggest possible changes in our submission…
In this article “Should the disbursement quota for registered charities in Canada change or be left alone?”, Mark Blumberg and Jessie Lang discuss the disbursement quota (DQ) and the Department of Finance’s consultation on whether the Income Tax Act should be…
I was asked the question “How engaged are Canadian registered charities in this election?” by a journalist and to be honest, I had to say I have no idea. There seems to be a big disconnect between the words spoken…
At a time when charities need funds and private foundations alone are sitting on $95 billion dollars, the Advisory Committee to the Charitable Sector (ACCS) has prepared a submission to Finance Canada stating that the disbursement quota (DQ) issue is…
We reviewed the Canadian registered charities that identified they issued official donation receipts and the total amount of donation receipts issued was approximately $19.6 billion. Here is a list of the Canadian charities that issued the largest amount of official…
Here is our note on Which Canadian charities had the largest assets in 2019?. Canadian registered charities are required to disclose on the T3010 their assets. The total assets of all the 83,832 registered charities were over $518 billion. Below…