After years of seeing less and less transparency about registered charities in Canada coming from the CRA, for various reasons, we now have one improvement from CRA in terms of disclosure about foreign activities. I want to commend them for…
I recently ran across a very good article entitled: “Going the Extra Mile: The Liability of Foreignness in U.S. Foundation International Grantmaking to Local NGOs”. It was written by three US professors namely Carrie R. Oelberger, Jesse Lecy, and Simon…
La Presse Inc. is now the first registered journalism organization registered under new category of qualified donee. You can see it listed here. As CRA notes “A registered journalism organization (RJO) is a qualified donee; therefore, it can issue official donation receipts…
Here is a reminder we just received from Corporations Canada relating to AGMs in 2021 for CNCA corporations and that they can be done virtually, partially virtually or by unanimous resolution in many cases. Also if you wish to delay…
Many Canadian registered charities will be receiving funds from the Federal government relating to the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) and other programs. Some of these charities will have never received funding from the Federal government…
Today an article appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek entitled “How a Charity Superstar Innovated Its Way to Political Scandal: The Kielburger brothers courted celebrities, became voluntourism pioneers, and built a Davos-friendly model of philanthrocapitalism. Then a Canadian Covid-relief deal got people…
Did you know that there are: 31,462 active CNCA corporations (As of September 1st 2020) 3,364 incorporations last year alone: (Fiscal year 2018-2019) At this rate, we will have double the number of Federal corporations in less than 10 years. …
We have recently prepared a new course on Running and Maintaining a Federal Non-Profit Corporation under the CNCA – An Introduction. Here is information on the course and how to register. Here is a blurb on the course: There are about…
We recently did a course entitled Multiple Corporate Structures for Canadian For-Profits, NPOs, + Charities to Enhance Flexibility and Impact. People who run charities, for-profits and non-profits in Canada and wish to understand the benefits of multiple entities for liability…
An interesting report from the OECD on charities in many different countries recently was published. It was given a really exciting title namely “Taxation and Philanthropy” so you might have missed it at the checkout at your local grocery store. …
The Ontario Ministry of Government Services is launching a new Ontario Business Registry at some point over the next year or two. This Registry will one day contain profiles on any business that is registered (including non-profit corporations), groups incorporated…
For those interested in understanding the complexity of US non-profits, much of which is similar in Canada, you might find the Philanthropy and Digital Civil Society: Blueprint by Lucy Bernholz to be quite interesting. Here is a description “Philanthropy and…
I received the following today from CRA reminding charities to file their T3010 if it was due between March 18, 2020 and December 31, 2020: English version *** La version française suit *** Your organization has been identified…
Statistics Canada launched a crowd-sourced questionnaire on diversity in the non-profit and charity sector. I encourage groups to complete the questionnaire so that we have some more information on diversity within non-profits and charities. It is available until December 23,…
We have been blogging about CRA’s draft guidance “Advancement of religion and charitable registration” in 2009, 2017 and 2018. Essentially CRA has been working on the document for a long time and their first draft was put out 11 years…
We recently received a copy of the CRA Ministerial Welcome Package which is dated November 2019. There are a number of references to charities including on pages 39, 64, 65, 73, 87-88, 95 and 120. There is no reference in the…
In a recent CRA document, we obtained that was released through access to information, it provides a good explanation of why CRA cares about charitable purposes and ALSO charitable activities. For most people the point is obvious. If you are…
About 4000 groups apply each year to the Charities Directorate of CRA to receive registered charitable status and about 46% obtain that status. The groups who don’t get charity status are not necessarily in any way bad groups – but…
A recent report entitled “Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy” is a wakeup call that Foundations and Charities are not doing enough to fund Black led organizations and groups that work primarily on Black communities. Their recommendation is to…
The CRA recently introduced a simplified process to allow employees in certain cases to claim home office expenses. About 1/2 of charities in Canada have employees so this will be helpful for them. Also, many volunteers have day jobs and…
On Friday, December 11, 2020 I gave testimony to the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) on the CSSG and We Charity scandal. Here is the video of the testimony. The part dealing with procurements and…
The CRA has revoked its first two registered charities in over a year. Actually, over 13 months not one charity has been revoked. Some think that if the CRA is not revoking any charities that is a good news story. …
The CRA has updated their guidance CG-027, Public policy dialogue and development activities by charities. There were only minor changes to the guidance to provide greater clarity. The CRA notes that “This guidance explains how the CRA will administer…
CRA released several new updates and guidances for registered charities on Friday. This includes a new guidance on the advancement of education (CG-030, Advancement of education and charitable registration) and relief of poverty (CG-029, Relief of poverty and charitable registration).…