Founded in 1982, Seva Canada Society (Seva) works to prevent and reverse blindness in developing countries. An estimated 36 million people around the world are blind, and another 217 million have significant vision trouble. About 80% of blindness is preventable or treatable, including cataracts, which are the leading treatable cause. Seva treats vision issues by offering glasses, medicine, and surgery to those in need. In F2018, Seva-funded eye care programs helped 1,593,890 people. Cataract surgeries, specifically, were performed on 114,864 people. 

Seva operates in 13 countries: Benin, Burundi, Cambodia, Congo-Brazzaville, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, India, Madagascar, Malawi, Nepal, Tanzania, and Tibetan areas of China. Seva partners with people in remote areas to create and staff Community Eye Centres. Scholarships encourage local doctors to learn more about eyes, and staff are trained in modern surgery procedures such as those performed to treat glaucoma and cataracts. Most patients pay a small amount for surgery. The money collected allows the eye centres to provide free care to the poorest 10% of patients, and to operate self-sufficiently. The fees for service are not collected by Seva Canada because they are used by the individual eye centres in continued operations.  

Seva Canada Society recognizes that there is almost no difference in the rate that men and women go blind, but women are significantly less likely to access eye care. Among children with treatable blindness, two-thirds are girls. The charity’s initiative, Equal Right to Sight, works with local women’s groups to help the eye centres reach out to women. 

Seva Canada Society is a medium-sized charity with donations and special events revenues of $1.4m in F2018. Administrative costs are 13% of total revenues and fundraising costs were 19% of donations. For every dollar donated, 68 cents go to Seva’s programs, which is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Seva has total funding reserves of $229k in F2018, for a program cost coverage ratio of 20%. This means that the charity’s reserves can cover annual program costs for about 2.5 months. 

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

Updated June 14, 2019 by Caroline McKenna.