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).…
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…
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…
We were pleasantly surprised to see that The Charity Report “your independent source of news in the charity sector” recently published an article Blumberg Snapshot: Taking measurement of the charity sector, 2010 to 2018. It profiles the many years that our…
Here is our Blumbergs Canadian Charity Sector Snapshot 2018. We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2018 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. The database covers about 84,323 of the 85,800 registered charities in…
Every year Blumbergs has its Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law Institute. This year we will be doing a “mini-institute” – very virtual, much shorter and more affordable but covering a number of topics that are of concern to Canadian charities. So…
A lot has happened since we originally published this article on September 4th so here is an updated version below. The WE Charity scandal has now been going on for over 3 months. It has caused the Minister…
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…
The WE Charity scandal has now been going on for over 2 months. A few weeks ago the Minister of Finance resigned and parliament was prorogued. Some will say this has nothing to do with WE Charity. I will leave…
Today Dalal Al-Waheidi, Executive Director of WE Charity, told the Finance Committee that today they filed their registration for the Federal lobbyist registration system. Here is a printout WE Charity _ Dalal Al-Waheidi, Executive Director – 12-Month Lobbying Summary –…
Would you like to obtain a grant from the Federal government? Well if you “communicate with a public officer holder” asking for funds that probably is lobbying and if you spend over 1/5 of an FTE over any month (A…
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…
Blumbergs is pleased to announce that we will be hosting Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law Boot Camp again on Monday, April 20, 2020. An easy enough date to remember! This is a one-day boot camp on compliance and standards issues for…
Donor Advised Funds are registered charities in Canada that allow a donor to donate to the charity but the donor retains the ability to recommend which registered charities or qualified donees will receive the funds. Donor Advised Funds or DAFs…
The CRA has released recently the 2019 version C of its T3010 Registered Charity Information Return. The major changes deal with replacing political activities with “public policy dialogue and development activities” (PPDDAs). As a result of Finance’s 2018 changes CRA no…
Press Progress has written an article entitled Right-Wing Media Outlet Accredited For Leaders’ Debate is Also Registered as a Charity for Immigrants. It is worth reading. It is nice to see more media outlets using the T3010 information and also www.CharityData.ca as well…
Elections Canada in late August 2019 updated their guide Political Financing Handbook for Third Parties Financial Agents and Auditors, which updates the last version of the guide which was published in June 2019. One of the changes was in their chart of…
The Tyee, an online magazine, recently posted an opinion piece by Tom McMahon entitled “Why Environmental Groups’ Attack on Elections Canada Is Wrong, and Dangerous“. It is a very thoughtful piece from an individual who has a good understanding of electoral regulation. …
CANADALAND recently had a podcast which dealt with a number of topics but one of them was charities, political activities, Elections Canada and the upcoming Federal election. The podcast was called “#227 Scandal? What Scandal?”. In the podcast Jesse Brown is joined by Sandy…
There has been a lot of media and social media coverage over the last few days about non-profits and charities and the rules around their involvement in the upcoming election. To my dismay, much of it has been inaccurate. While…
A great deal has been written about legal compliance surrounding charities in Canada. Much of that material however, is highly specialized, hard to understand, and sometimes esoteric. As a result, it can be difficult for charities, employees and volunteers to…
In December 2017, CRA introduced a new program, the Charities Education Program (“CEP”) which is aimed at helping charities comply with the requirements for Canadian registered charities. CRA said it aims to visit 500 charities a year with this program. The…
Here is our new Canadian Charity Legal Checklist. For those who are interested in reviewing legal compliance for their registered charity, they may find the checklist helpful. If you require legal assistance and wish to retain our law firm then please…
On March 15, 2019, CRA announced that there will be changes to the T3010 Annual Return and the T2050 Application to Register a Charity to account for the recent changes to the political activities rules for Canadian registered charities. Instead…