The demise of the Kids Company charity in the UK was a big event. It was a large charity that had close connections with government that very quickly imploded. The Charity Commission notes: An official report has found that…
Today we received information from Ontario’s Anti-Racism Directorate at the Ministry of Citizenship and Multiculturalism about a new grant program to support Anti-Hate Security Measures for Faith-Based and Cultural Organizations. The Ontario Grant to Support Anti-Hate Security Measures for…
We previously discussed on February 6, 2022 the establishment of a non-profit organization apparently to receive the vast amounts of crowdsourced money for the “Freedom Convoy”. Apparently, they have added more board members. They had three and now they have…
So there is a new non-profit: Freedom 2022 Human Rights and Freedoms. It was just incorporated on January 31, 2022. It appears to be similar to the name of the group identified in the US website/crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo to be…
In March 2021, the Federal Government released their official response to the Report of the Special Committee on the Charitable Sector: “Catalyst for Change: A Roadmap to a Stronger Charitable Sector.” The full response can be found in PDF version…
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…
CRA is having today a “Question and answer sessions on the targeted COVID-19 support measures for businesses and organizations”. This may be useful for some non-profits and charities interested in these support measures. It is on January 13, at 1PM.…
The Federal government has announced on December 16, 2021, that the Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) program will try to make available 100,000 full-time summer job opportunities for young people. According to the government, this represents a 40% increase from the…
Here are the CRA letters from a number of recent Canadian registered charity revocations. These letters from CRA cover many different grounds for de-registration. For a number of years, we have been providing the public with copies of CRA revocation…
The League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith and B’nai Brith Foundation District No. 22 were two Canadian registered charities that were revoked as a result of audit by CRA. I requested copies of the documents that are publicly available…
In a recent Toronto Star article entitled “Ontario government making fixes to troubled online business registry” it notes; The Ontario government is taking care of business by cranking repairs of its troubled online corporate registry into overdrive. As first disclosed…
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…
CRA has the ability to provide penalties to Canadian registered charities and suspend the receipting privileges and qualified donee status of a registered charity. This is in addition to other tools such as revoking the charitable status of a charity. …
In the BC case, Henderson v. Myler the BC Supreme Court dealt with a bequest. The case deals with a dispute as to how an estate should be divided as there was a will, but also a note which some…
In 2009 we wrote a short note entitled “Canadian Charities Based in Ontario and Grants to Qualified donees – Ontario is a little different” which discussed how Ontario charities could not just make grants to qualified donees which may be…