World Vision Canada

About World Vision Canada:

Founded in 1957, World Vision Canada (WVC) is a Christian development, relief, and advocacy charity that helps communities, families, and children overcome poverty and injustice. Through monthly donations of $39, Canadian donors sponsor children, which provided food, water, healthcare, and education to 230 communities across 48 countries in 2017. Based on international program costs (omitting disaster response), WVC spent roughly $1.7m per community in F2017. The charity reports 430,953 sponsored children during the year, continuing the steady decline in child sponsorship from a peak of 514,060 in F2011.

Through its child/community sponsorship lifecycle, World Vision helps communities in three phases: Phase 1 focuses on partnering with community members to determine what needs to be done to achieve long-term solutions for challenges faced by the community; Phase 2 focuses on evaluating progress on improving community living conditions and making changes as needed to meet long-term goals; and in Phase 3, which is reached when the community sees improved conditions, WVC ceases its activities in the area.  WVC’s projects last 10 to 15 years in each community. 

Over the past five years, WVC's largest program costs include health, water, and sanitation projects (26%), food and nutrition (17%), education (11%), developing global strategies for helping children (8%), developing communities in sustainable ways (8%), and community empowerment and child rights advocacy (7%).

In addition to development, World Vision Canada is a disaster response charity with a track record of quick response, spending disaster relief funding within three years. Emergency and disaster relief costs were approximately 14% of program spending over the past five years. In F2017, response efforts provided 3.5 million people in Somalia, South Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda with basic necessities, including food, water, shelter, and healthcare services. WVC helped 203,009 Haitians with blankets, water filters, building materials, and other emergency items in response to Hurricane Matthew.

Results and Impact: WVC contributes to World Vision’s global WASH program that works to improve water accessibility and sustainable management across the world. In 2016, 4,671,393 people gained access to clean water in East Africa, West Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, Asia, and the Middle East & Eastern Europe because of the global WASH program.

World Vision’s community-based management of acute malnutrition program had a cure rate of 92% in F2013, 90% in F2104, and 91% in F2015. In 2015, South Sudan was declared the most fragile state in the world, with many communities affected by conflict or drought. Through its FEED program, WVC helped improve household year-round access to food in South Sudan from 21% in 2015 to 26% in 2016. In the same time span, WVC increased the percentage of households operating income-generating activities from 7% to 15%.

In F2016, 15 communities from 10 countries graduated from WVC’s partnerships. Major outcomes seen in graduated communities include: child enrollment in school of 98% in Kalamo, Zambia, a 54% increase from when WVC started working in the area in 2001; 100% of families having access to clean drinking water in Thiappy, Senegal, up from 26% when WVC’s WASH program started in the area; and a 7% decrease in child stunting due to malnourishment in Thanmalvila, Sri Lanka, from 15% to 8%.

Financial Review:

World Vision Canada is Canada's largest donor-funded charity and tops the list of Canada’s Major 100 charities receiving cash donations of $244.6m in F2017 along with donated gifts in kind of $119.5m. WVC received government funding of $37.1m in F2017.

WVC's administrative costs are 6% of total revenues and fundraising costs are 23% of total donations. For every dollar donated, 71 cents went to the cause in F2017, which falls within Ci's reasonable range for overhead spending. WVC has total funding reserves of $51.7m that can cover the charity’s program costs for less than 2 months, showing a need for donations.

WVC provides more details in its 2017 Financial Overview.  

Note: For an explanation on why Charity Intelligence's cents to the cause differs from World Vision Canada's reported overhead costs World Vision Canada - A Case Study on Charity Ratios

Like most large Canadian charities partnered with international organizations, Canadian donations are pooled with the international partner: World Vision Canada transferred to World Vision International $303.9m in F2017, $318.1m in F2016, and $325.1m in F2015 in donations and donated goods to run international development projects. 

Included in World Vision Canada's other income is $40.0m in F2017, $28.2m in F2016, and $18.4m in F2015 in funding from international organizations, including the UN's World Food Programme. 

World Vision Canada reports using external fundraisers: in F2017 it paid $8.9m to external fundraisers who brought in $72.9m in donations (12% fundraising cost).

Updated on June 28, 2018 by Joeyanne Cheung.