Founded in 1894, Fred Victor's mission is to improve the health, income, and housing stability of poor and homeless people in Toronto. It works towards its vision for Toronto to be a healthy and thriving city where every person has a home and access to opportunity. Fred Victor is one of Toronto's lead agencies addressing homelessness in the ZeroTO initiative to end homelessness in Toronto by 2025.

Fred Victor is a multi-service charity with 20 different sites across Toronto providing programs to over 2,000 clients daily. These programs cover four main categories: Housing, Health, Income, and Ending Homelessness. During F2020, Fred Victor amalgamated with the Toronto Christian Resource Centre (CRC), which shares a similar mission of offering housing and support services for people living in Regent Park and downtown Toronto.

Fred Victor’s Housing and Ending Homelessness programs include 2 emergency homeless shelters that are open 24/7, providing emergency respite care. Its Bethlehem United shelter housed 1,320 people in F2020 and is the only Toronto shelter allowing pets. Fred Victor’s Women’s Drop-In program also had 62,441 visits in F2020 with 4,206 referrals made to find adequate housing. In addition to its two shelters, Fred Victor helped 684 clients with housing access & support services in F2020.

Fred Victor’s health programs place it at the frontlines of Toronto's opioid crisis. In 2018 it opened a safe-injection site which saw 51,197 supervised consumption visits in F2020. In 2020, it also engaged 7,774 participants in 372 health promotion groups, including suicide intervention. It also provided on-site mental health and support services to 1,255 people in F2020 and diverted 1,078 clients out of the criminal justice system to support services in the community.

Fred Victor's Income programs include Employment & Training, Friends Catering, Keep Cool, and a Women’s Bakery. In F2020, 24 women at the Women’s Bakery graduated with the goal that they would be able to increase their income. Similarly, 28 participants had hands-on culinary training through the Friends Catering Social Enterprise. The Keep Cool Team provided on-the-job Peer outreach Work training for 31 people. In F2020, clients accessed Fred Victor’s employment and training services 2,337 times.

Fred Victor acquired the 40 Oaks Housing Community in F2020 through its amalgamation with the CRC; 40 Oaks provides affordable housing for 100 tenants. Fred Victor’s other activities in Regent Park in F2020 include drop-in programs and volunteering opportunities with 4,866 participants, 25 community events with 1,495 attendees, and 90 gardening program sessions with 555 participants. Fred Victor also served more than 50,000 free meals to residents of Regent Park and provided 3,193 support referrals to participants at events.

Fred Victor is a ­­­­Medium-sized charity with total donations of $2.5m in F2020. Fred Victor received $29.2m in government funding, representing 85% of total revenues. Administrative costs are 7% of revenues (excluding investment income) and fundraising costs are 3% of donations. This means overhead costs are 10%. For every dollar donated, 90 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Note that overhead ratios are likely understated due to a lack of transparency in cost breakdowns for common expenses like salaries, rent, and benefits. Additionally, Ci could not use the figures reported in Fred Victor’s T3010 filing with the CRA since expenses do not reconcile with the charity’s audited financial statements and F2020 CRA data for Fred Victor was not available at the time of this update.  

­­Fred Victor’s interest-bearing debts of $15.4m (held in mortgages) exceed its gross funding reserves of $13.9m. Excluding the long-term portions of mortgages, Fred Victor could operate using reserve funds for roughly five months.

This charity report is an update that has been sent to Fred Victor for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on August 10, 2020 by Eric Jose.