Charity Intelligence is a 5-star rated charity. It is financially transparent, has above average results reporting grade and has reasonable overhead costs. With its current reserves it can cover around one year and three months of annual program costs. 

Founded in 2006, Charity Intelligence Canada (Ci) aims to inform Canadians on registered charities and help donors make impactful giving decisions. Ci’s analysis helps to advise individual donors, foundations, and corporations. According to a 2015 Statistics Canada survey, 29% of donors are unsure about how charities use their money and 34% have doubts on whether charities use their funds effectively. Ci keeps donors informed through charity profiles, research reports, and commentary on news in the charitable sector. 

Charity Intelligence’s main program is charity research. In F2022, it spent 55% of research costs on impact analysis and 35% on charity ratings and results reporting. 

Ci’s charity profiles provide a summary of a given charity’s programs and spending. Each charity profile assesses its financial transparency, results reporting, need for funding, and cents to the cause. In F2022, Ci updated 436 charity reports, compared to 416 in F2021. Ci’s demonstrated impact ratings measure the social value that a charity produces for each dollar spent. As of F2022, Ci has 280 charities rated on impact. The charity produced four impact reports explaining how the score is calculated. Each report focused on a different high impact charity. Each year, Ci publishes a Top 100 Rated Charities and Top 10 Impact Charities lists. 

In F2022, Ci received 502,000 unique visitors to its website. It received a total of 1.8 million page views during the year. Website visits were 624,300 in F2022, compared to 587,100 the previous year.  

Charity Intelligence is a small charity, with $369k in Canadian donations in F2022. This included $10k from members of Ci’s board of directors.  

Administrative costs are 5% of revenues and fundraising costs are 5% of Canadian donations. This results in total overhead spending of 10%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 90 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. 

Charity Intelligence has $594k in reserve funds. These are the charity’s cash and investments. With its existing reserves, the charity can cover one year and three months of annual program costs.  

In F2022 Ci paid external fundraisers $17k. These external fundraisers raised $28k. This means it costs the charity $0.60 to raise $1 using external fundraisers.    

Updated on June 22, 2023 by Alessandra Castino.

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