The CharityData.ca website is the preeminent freely available transparency tool for information on Canadian registered charities. It has been available since August of 2016 and we have been making intermittent improvements to CharityData.ca ever since it was created.
If you have suggestions for improvements you can send us an email. If you could try to answer the questions below that would be helpful also.
The questions are:
- Why are you visiting the site?
- How often do you use CharityData.ca?
- Is it easy for you to find the CharityData.ca website?
- Do you find it easy to find charities or do searches on the website?
- Do you use the Director Search function?
- Do you use the sort function under Advanced Charity Search?
- Do you have suggestions for improving CharityData.ca? For example any additional features or suggestions for how data is displayed, etc?
- Are you having trouble finding something on the site?
- Is it clear to you when it would be better to use the CRA Charities Listing vs. the CharityData.ca website?
- Have you ever visited the CanadaHelps link from the bottom of the charity’s page?
- Have you ever visited the CRA from the bottom of the charity’s page?
Here is a brief overview of CharityData.ca
Blumbergs has created the largest Canadian registered charity information portal at CharityData.ca with up to 17 years of data 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 analyse 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 it aims 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 the 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 at https://apps.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/hacc/srch/pub/dsplyAdvncdSrch However, for analyzing the past data of charities CharityData.ca is much easier to use. Here is a detailed comparison of the CRA’s Charities Listing vs. Blumbergs’ CharityData.ca
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.