If you want a basic list of all current Canadian registered charities, you can download it from the CRA website. This is useful for groups, such as those who want to incorporate a drop-down menu of registered charities into their software or app. This list does not have all the financial, activity and other information about registered charities, but it is useful to know whether a group is a registered charity or not.
Here are the instructions:
- Go to the Charities Listing at https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/hacc/srch/pub/dsplyBscSrch. You can use either the Basic or Advanced search; it doesn’t matter.
- Without inserting any information into the form, hit the SEARCH button, and you should get about 85,000 matches.
- Go to the very bottom of the first page, and you will see four boxes; one of them is labelled “Download results.”
- Click “Download results,” and approximately 2 seconds later, the result will be downloaded into your “Downloads” folder. You can then open it.
In short, that is how you can get a basic list of current charities with the following information:
BN/Registration number:
Organization name:
Status:
Type of qualified donee:
Effective date of status:
Sanction Designation:
Charity type:
Category:
Address:
City:
Province, territory, outside of Canada:
Country:
Postal code/Zip code:
If you want to select a subset of charities, you can instead of inserting nothing, insert something and then perform the download. So, if you put in “Toronto,” it will only give you a list of 5066 charities with addresses in Toronto.
The Readme.txt notes;
Readme.txt
The search results are exported as a tab-delimited text file which imported into spreadsheet, database or other software.
Field 1 contains the BN/Registration Number.
Field 2 contains the Organization name.
Field 3 contains the Charity Status.
Field 4 contains the Type of qualified donee.
Field 5 contains the Effective Date of Status.
Field 6 contains the Sanction.
Field 7 contains the Designation.
Field 8 contains the Charity type.
Field 9 contains the Category.
Field 10 contains the Address.
Field 11 contains the City.
Field 12 contains the Province, territory, outside of Canada.
Field 13 contains the Country.
Field 14 contains the Postal Code/Zip code.
The Criteria.txt file lets you know which search terms were used – for example, “Toronto”
Organization name:
BN/Registration number: RR
Status: Registered
Type of qualified donee:
Effective date of status (yyyy-mm-dd):
Sanction:
City: Toronto
Province, territory, outside of Canada:
Postal code/Zip code:
Designation:
Charity type:
Category:
For groups that want an updated list of Canadian registered charities, they can download a small series of files on a daily or weekly basis.