Founded in 2005, Canada Gives aims to promote charitable giving through donor advised funds. Donor advised funds offer donors the ability to easily fund charities of their choice and promptly receive tax receipts. Canada Gives simplifies giving by providing a central online platform to help donors compare charities, view quarterly reports of their funds, and consult with advisors.

In F2020, Canada Gives gave out $19.6m in donor advised funds to 625 organizations. Since founding, it states that it has distributed $57.3m.

Canada Gives offers a variety of online services to help donors set up donor advised funds and give to charities. It helps owners of private foundations switch from running independent foundations to donating through Canada Gives. The charity states that this helps private philanthropists continue to donate while saving on administrative costs from running their own foundations. It also recently launched the Canada Gives Donor Portal, which offers a central platform for donors to keep track of tax receipts and past grants. To help donors compare different charities, Canada Gives’ website includes a search function with reports on Canada’s more than 86,000 registered charities.

Canada Gives is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada's largest charities in terms of donations. It received $40.4m in donations in F2020, compared to $61.0m in F2019. In F2020, it distributed $19.6m in donor advised funds, up from $6.4m in F2019. Administrative costs are 3% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs are less than 1% of donations. This results in total overhead spending of 3%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 97 cents go to the cause. This is not within Ci's reasonable range for overhead spending between 65 and 95 cents. However, given the low-cost nature of this charity, this likely does not raise concerns about understated overhead costs.

Canada Gives has $118.9m in total funding reserves, of which $118.7m is restricted cash and investments for donor advised funds. Excluding cash for donor advised funds, the charity can cover 32% or nearly four months of annual program costs with its existing reserves.

The charity’s financial statements disclose related party transactions. In F2020, it paid $130k in software licensing fees, $20k in rent, $14k in repair costs, and $8k in fees related to previous years to a company owned by Canada Gives’ CEO. It has a remaining balance of $160k to be paid to the company for additional software fees.

Charity Intelligence has sent this update to Canada Gives for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 13, 2021 by Eric Zhao.