Comments provided by UNHCR Canada October 6, 2021

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people. UNHCR, also known as the UN Refugee Agency, operates in more than 130 countries and has had offices in Canada since 1976.

The Private Sector Partnerships (PSP) office for UNHCR Canada is based in Toronto. UNHCR Canada’s PSP office actively raises funds in Canada and engages the public to learn more about the plight of refugees and forcibly displaced people through mailings, advertising and digital engagement. UNHCR Canada’s PSP office is responsible for raising funds from individuals, foundations and corporate entities within Canada and remitting them to UNHCR’s programs around the world.

Donations to UNHCR Canada currently do not fund programs within Canada. The money is remitted globally and applied either to the highest priority needs of the organization or to the area to which the donor has specified.

In 2020, of every dollar donated to UNHCR—including contributions from governments and private individuals— 84 cents went to implement programs. This is a high efficiency rate and is gained in part from our global scale.

Under Canadian law, as a body of the United Nations, UNHCR Canada is a Qualified Donee as defined by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). This allows us to issue tax receipts for donations. Many other countries such as the US and the UK do not make this distinction for UN agencies, hence the need to register charitable entities which are called “National Partners” in those countries.

You can learn more about how UNHCR Canada fundraises here and you can learn more about where donor money goes here.

The UNHCR Canada PSP office gains many benefits from an efficiency standpoint in not registering as a charity: overhead such as salaries, IT and HR are paid from global accounts allowing us to leverage economies of scale.

UNHCR seeks to ensure the greatest level of transparency in reporting how funds have been allocated and the impact that monetary contributions have had on the ability to carry out our vital, lifesaving work in support of millions of refugees and forcibly displaced people worldwide. On UNHCR’s Global Focus website, we offer a comprehensive breakdown by donor country of funds contributed and how the contributions were earmarked and allocated.

UNHCR is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions. Most of UNHCR’s programs are funded by governments, but partnerships with corporations, foundations and private individuals also constitute important sources of funding.

In 2020, 85 per cent of UNHCR’s funding worldwide came from governments and the European Union, while 11 per cent came from private sector donors. In 2020, UNHCR Canada raised $15.3 million from private donors. An analysis and overview of UNHCR’s programmatic funding in 2020 can be found here.

Money raised from Canadian private donors is listed as “private donors” in Canada. Government funding an also be viewed on this website.

UNHCR also publishes an annual donor impact report and a more comprehensive overview and report on all of our organization’s work.

We are in active consideration as to whether to register as a charitable entity in Canada. This would confer numerous benefits, including the ability to share audited financial statements with our donors just for our Canadian operation. There are also downsides to pursuing this option, including the potential to have increased costs of fundraising—all these considerations are being actively weighed and discussed.

Regardless of the direction we ultimately maintain or pursue, donors to UNHCR in Canada can see global reporting on our program implementation and impact. To learn more about UNHCR and the latest about our work worldwide, please visit https://www.unhcr.ca.