Red Door Family Shelter

About Red Door Family Shelter:

Established in 1982, the Red Door Family Shelter has grown to become one of the largest family shelters in the Greater Toronto Area with 156 beds in two locations. Its mission is to reduce the impact of homelessness by providing safe and supportive shelter to families in Toronto, Ontario.

In F2016, Red Door was at capacity for 349 of 366 days.  On any given night, 55% of residents were children. The charity sheltered 237 families in total, including 163 families with single mothers. Red Door Family Shelter reported serving 18% fewer families in F2016 than F2015. It accredits this to lack of subsidized housing. On average, families stay at Red Door for 5 months. Red Door operates a food bank as part of its basic needs programming and gave 173,000 pounds of food to 204 families. As part of its transitional support and outreach programs, Red Door moved 72 families into new homes. Of the 83 families that were housed after staying in the shelter, 23 now reside in subsidized housing and 60 in private market rentals.

In March 2014, Red Door Family Shelter’s location at 875 Queen Street East was placed into receivership. Since then, the shelter has been operating at an interim location at 1430 Gerrard Street East.  An agreement was made between Red Door, Harhay Development, and the City of Toronto for the original Queen Street location to become a mixed-use development, combining a shelter, retail and residential condos. Red Door will have 20,000 square feet of shelter place with private bedrooms for each family and dedicated programming space. Red Door Family Shelter has a $3m fundraising campaign for the equipment, furnishings and resident services at the new shelter. The charity has raised over $1.1m for the $3m campaign as of F2016. 

Financial Review:

Red Door Family Shelter is a small-cap charity, with $617k in donations in F2016. Most of the shelter’s funding comes from provincial and municipal governments, which contributed $4.9m to revenues in F2016.

Red Door Family Shelter's administrative costs were 8% of revenues, while fundraising costs were 33% of donations. As such, for every $1 donated, 59 cents go to the cause. This does not fall within Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

The charity has funding reserves of $799k, which can cover annual programs for 2 months, showing a need for funding.  

This charity report is an update that is currently being reviewed by Red Door Family Shelter. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on May 31, 2017 by Juliana Badovinac