The Canadian charity and non-profit sectors are an important part of the Canadian economy and have a huge impact on the lives of Canadians. With the registered charity sector (approximately 86,000 organizations), the public has relatively up-to-date and detailed information. Unfortunately, with the 80-100,000 non-profits that are not registered charities (we don’t even know how many there are), we have almost no information on the size and scope of that sector and there is little transparency on individual non-profits that are not registered charities.
Registered Charities
Some statistics on Canadian registered charities from the Blumbergs’ Snapshot of the Canadian Charity Sector 2020 include:
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- 83,991 registered charities filed their T3010 in Canada out of approximately 86,000 charities
- $304 billion in total revenue for Canadian charities and total expenditures of $281 billion
- Government revenue totaled $204.8 billion including from the federal government ($10.7 billion), provincial governments ($182.4 billion), and municipal/regional governments ($11.6 billion). In total, government is approximately 67% of the revenue of the whole charity sector
- 77,017 identified themselves as active and 4,139 as inactive
- 29,811 made gifts to other charities or qualified donees during their 2020 fiscal year
- Canadian charities spent over $4 billion outside of Canada
- 143 Canadian charities received funds from Global Affairs Canada for foreign activities
- 2,884 identified having contractual relationships with foreign intermediaries, 1,131 charities identified that employees conducted activities outside of Canada and 2,230 had volunteers conducting foreign activities
- $2.9 billion was received by Canadian charities from outside of Canada
- In 2019, 791 identified carrying on political activities but these questions have now been removed and there is no transparency about Canadian charities and political activities
- 43,507 identified having employment expenses while 38,859 did not have any employment expenses
- $166 billion was spent by Canadian charities on salaries and other compensation expenditures
- $18.7 billion in official donation receipts were issued by Canadian registered charities
If the GDP of Canada in 2020 was approximately 1.576 Trillion dollars, and expenditures of the registered charity sector alone are over $281 billion then such expenditures are around 17% of that amount. The 17% figure does not even include the value of volunteer time!
The Canadian registered charity sector alone (not even including non-profits that are not charities) is bigger than the five largest following industries (as a percentage of GDP):
| Real estate and rental and leasing | 13.01% |
| Manufacturing | 10.37% |
| Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction | 8.21% |
| Finance and insurance | 7.06% |
| Construction | 7.08% |
Non-profits
There is very little information on the size of the non-profit sector, that are not registered charities.
A recent CRA report notes on page 7:
According to CRA data from 2010, charities represent a significant portion of the financial resources of the overall NPO sector in Canada, accounting for 68% of all revenues in the sector and nearly 96% of all donations. In addition, they account for a substantial share of the sector’s foreign activities, as 75% of international not-for-profit organizations in Canada are registered charities.
If 68% of the broader NPO sector revenue goes to registered charities, then presumably, the remainder (32%) goes to nonprofit organizations that are not registered charities. If 32% of the broader NPO sector’s revenue is non-profits, that is not a small amount of money. Remember that in 2020 the registered charity sector alone had expenses of $281 billion. So, if one extrapolates the 2010 CRA statistics, one could estimate that the non-profit sector in Canada is about $150 billion per year.
For the most up-to-date information, see our directory on Canadian charity statistics.
We have long pushed for greater transparency in the non-profit and charitable sectors and you can see our submissions on transparency in this directory. Our most recent submission is Blumbergs’ Pre-Budget Submission for the 2023 Canadian Federal Budget and also some comments on the lack of transparency and some recent scandals.
Blumbergs has created the largest Canadian registered charity information portal at CharityData.ca, with up to 19 years of information on every Canadian registered charity. CharityData.ca provides an easy-to-use interface that is far easier to use than the CRA’s Charities Listing to analyze T3010 Registered Charity Information Return data on a particular charity. It also allows the user to sort charities under “Advanced Charity Search” by over 30 criteria.
While it is easy to see what gifts a charity gives to other charities on the CRA website but what if you want to know which charities gave funds to a particular charity? Now you can do this on CharityData.ca by looking under the “Fundraising” tab.
The Director Search function of CharityData.ca also allows users to search over 600,000 directors by their first and last names, and it is the only publicly available and up-to-date tool for searching them.
The portal is free, and its aim is to increase transparency in the Canadian charity sector.
You can use CharityData.ca to search or sort by the following:
- Search by Name of Charity
- BN
- Program
- Charity Type
- Revenue
- Province and
- City
You can also sort by over 25 different parameters listed below.
- Relevance
- Legal name
- Total assets (4200)
- Total liabilities (4350)
- Total revenue (4700)
- Total expenditures (5100)
- Receipted donations (4500)
- Total amount received from other charities (4510)
- Total amount of tax-receipted gifts-in-kind (580)
- Revenue from sale of goods and services (4640)
- Total revenue received from federal government (4540)
- Total revenue received from provincial/territorial governments (4550)
- Total revenue received from municipal/regional governments (4560)
- Total tax-receipted revenue from outside Canada (4571)
- Total non tax-receipted revenue from outside Canada (4575)
- Total Advertising and promotion (4800)
- Occupancy costs (4850)
- Professional and consulting fees (4860)
- Total expenditures on charitable activities (5000)
- Total expenditures on management and administration (5010)
- Total expenditures on fundraising (5020)
- Total expenditures on political activities, inside or outside Canada (5030)
- Total other expenditures (5040)
- Total amounts paid to external fundraisers (5460)
- Total compensation expenditures (390)
- Total Expenditures Outside of Canada / Foreign Activities (200)
For the most up-to-date information on a particular charity, including whether a charity is still registered, you should use the CRA Charities Listing. However, for analyzing the past data of charities CharityData.ca is much easier to use.
CharityData.ca is part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project, which is in memory of my youngest brother Sean Blumberg. Sean was a sweet, kind person, a great brother who helped me on a number of occasions with many tasks, including the time-consuming and arduous task of reviewing T3010 databases and making them into something useful. As part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project, Blumbergs has been releasing information on the Canadian charity sector to provide a better understanding of the size, scope, complexity and challenges of the sector.