Kids Help Phone is a 4-star charity. It has above average disclosure with a B+ results reporting grade. It holds reserves within Ci’s reasonable range. For every dollar donated to Kids Help Phone, 61 cents are available to go to the cause.

Founded in 1989, Kids Help Phone (KHP) began as Canada's first telephone counselling service for young people. Its early focus was youth experiencing abuse. The charity now provides free, confidential e-mental health support by phone, text and online chat. Text services run in English and French. Phone support is available in over 100 languages through interpreters. It serves young people aged 5 to 29 anywhere in Canada, 24 hours a day. Its website also offers self-help resources and a directory of local support services. A separate program, acceleratorKHP, runs applied research to map gaps in mental health services and test new counselling tools. Kids Help Phone is based in Toronto and operates nationally.

The charity reports that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among youths (15-34) in Canada.

KHP runs two main programs: Mental Health Services and acceleratorKHP. In the fiscal year ending December 2025, KHP spent $34.3m on its programs.

Mental Health Services is KHP’s largest program, accounting for 92% of total program costs in 2025. KHP runs a 24/7 e-mental health service for youth seeking mental health support. The charity connects with youth through its website, counselling, texting, and peer-to-peer services. It also offers programming for post-secondary students and adults. In 2025, KHP interacted with young people over 3.7 million times in Canada. Texting accounted for 273,815 conversations and the Peer-to-Peer Community, a set of moderated online forums, for another 279,132 interactions. Counsellors spent an average of 27 minutes on each call and crisis responders 50 minutes on each texting session. KHP reports its frontline team helped young people develop 15,836 safety plans. The charity reached 29,189 students in grades 4 to 12 through its Counsellor in the Classroom program, and more than 440,000 people through community outreach to Indigenous, Black and newcomer youths. Among texters surveyed in 2025, 10% identified as Indigenous and 7% as Black.

acceleratorKHP accounted for 8% of total program costs in 2025. It is KHP's applied research and innovation program, using the charity's service data to identify gaps in youth mental health support and to develop new tools for delivering it. The charity reports drawing on over 23 million interactions, including more than one million de-identified conversation transcripts and 53 million text-based messages. This year, it launched a service mapping project to find where demand for mental health support in Atlantic Canada is high but local services are scarce, and two trendspotting projects to track emerging issues among young people. It also began a partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University to build a generative AI training system for its frontline team. To inform this work, KHP reports engaging over 545 youths, academics and community members through surveys, workshops and interviews to shape its GenAI prototype, and over 250 youths and members of equity-deserving groups to co-create mental health resources. In April 2025, it held its first Accelerator Summit, bringing together more than 50 thought leaders, community partners, and youth advocates.

Ci consolidated the finances of KHP with those of its associated Foundation that started operations in 2025. Gifts from KHP to the Foundation were excluded from revenues and expenses. KHP henceforth refers to the combined financials from both charities.

KHP uses activity-based costing, a best practice. It clearly allocates expenses across program, administrative and fundraising categories.

In 2025, KHP earned $48.9m in revenue. It received $27.7m in donations and special events revenue (57% of total revenue), $18.5m in government funding (38% of total revenue), and $2.4m in investment income (5% of total revenue).

Administrative costs are 15% of revenues (less investment income). Fundraising costs are 24% of donations. Total overhead is 39%. For every dollar donated to KHP, 61 cents are available for programs. This is outside Ci's reasonable range.

In 2025, KHP spent $34.3m on programs (70% of total revenue). It recorded a $1.1m surplus and spent $240k on capital projects.

KHP has $47.7m in reserve funds (cash and investments). The reserves can cover 139%, or roughly one year and five months of program costs.

In 2025, KHP paid external fundraisers $162k to collect $246k in donations. This means it costs KHP $0.66 to raise $1 using external fundraisers. It is likely more cost efficient to donate directly to the charity.

This charity update has been sent to Kids Help Phone for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming. Updated by Nick Reszetnik on July 23, 2026.