Simon Fraser University is a top-rated five-star charity and one of Canada's largest charities by donations. As with most large universities, it is financially transparent and has a high results reporting grade. The charity does not have large funding reserves and can cover less than a year of program costs.

Founded in 1965, Simon Fraser University (SFU) is a public research university in British Columbia. SFU has three main campuses: a Vancouver campus, a Surrey Campus, and a Burnaby campus. Its Vancouver campus has nine facilities and is the city’s largest downtown university prescence. The university’s main charitable programs are Academics, Research, and Facilities.

A Charity Intelligence 2023 Top 100 Rated Charity

In fall of 2021, Simon Fraser University had 30,398 students enrolled. This included 25,595 undergraduate students and 4,803 graduate students. It reports that 5,288 undergraduate students and 1,600 graduate students are from outside of Canada. SFU has eight faculties that offer a total of 193 undergraduate degree programs and 144 graduate degree programs.

SFU reports that it had 1,022 faculty members in F2021, including 415 international faculty members. The charity has over 61 research centres and institutes, and over 280 international research partners across 25 different countries. The university reports that it has 3,100 international jointly authored publications. In F2021, its facilities department completed over 25,000 service and project requests. It also completed the construction of a new 110,750 square-foot student union building.

Simon Fraser University is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada’s largest charities in terms of donations. In F2021, it received $72.1m in Canadian donations. It also received $305.9m in student fees (33% of total revenue) and $354.8m in government funding (38% of total revenue). In F2021, the university earned $126.0m in investment income (14% of total revenue), which represents a 14% annual return. Its average annual investment return since F2014 is 6%. The average annual investment return of the S&P 500 from 2014 to 2021 is around 13%. Investments in private equity, multi-strategy funds, real estate, and mortgages comprise 5% of SFU’s portfolio. The university has an interest rate swap agreement with the province of British Columbia that has a fair value of $17.6m.

SFU’s administrative costs are 9% of revenues excluding investment income. Fundraising costs are 9% of Canadian donations. This results in total overhead spending of 17%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 83 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Simon Fraser University has $930.9m in net funding reserves ($1.1 billion in liquid assets less $190.9m in interest-bearing debts). Its liquid assets also include $392.9m in donor-endowed funds. SFU’s net funding reserves, excluding donor-endowed funds, can cover annual program costs for around 11 months.

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

Updated on June 30th, 2022 by Arjun Kapur.