Heart and Stroke

222 Queen Street, Suite 1402
Ottawa, ON K1P 5V9
President & CEO: Diego Marchese
Board Chair: Rod McKay

Website: www.heartandstroke.com
Charitable Reg. #: 10684 6942 RR0001
Sector: Health
Operating Charity

Charity Rating

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Donor Accountability

Grade: A+

The grade is based on the charity's public reporting of the work it does and the results it achieves.

Financial Transparency

Audited financial statements for current and previous years available on the charity's website [ Audited financial statement for most recent year ]

Need for Funding

Funding Reserves Program Costs

Spending Breakdown

Full-time staff #620

Avg. Compensation $76,328

Top 10 Staff Salary Range

$350k + 2
$300k - $350k 1
$250k - $300k 5
$200k - $250k 2
$160k - $200k 0
$120k - $160k 0
$80k - $120k 0
$40k - $80k 0
< $40k 0
Information from most recent CRA Charities Directorate filings for F2015

About Heart and Stroke :

A lot of new developments at Heart and Stroke. In August 2016, Diego Marchese took over as interim CEO from David Sculthorpe. Marchese has been with Heart and Stroke since 1993. Heart and Stroke Foundation Canada has a new name, Heart&Stroke, and launched a new logo. The website has also been totally revamped to better report on HSC’s work and prove its impact. These changes are to become more “personal” to Canadians with the aim of re-igniting Canadians' passion so they support  more. In a Toronto Star article, interim CEO Marchese says Heart and Stroke's new priorities will focus on children at a very early age, on women who do not receive the same diagnosis and treatment as men, and on First Nations populations, where heart disease is higher than the general Canadian population.

Founded in 1952, Heart&Stroke's (HSC) mission is to “prevent disease, save lives and promote recovery”. Heart&Stroke's activities include research, advocacy and health promotion programs.

Heart&Stroke aims to prevent disease by generating awareness. Its goal is to reduce Canadian deaths from heart disease and strokes from 66,000 in 2012 to 49,500 by 2020.  It organizes school and community programs, issues health information, and influences public policies. HSC aims to save lives by enabling better response and treatment for cardiac emergencies and strokes. This is accomplished by developing educational materials, and educating the public on CPR, AEDs and stroke awareness. HSC also aims to promote recovery by providing recovery information and creating a support network for survivors.

In F2015, Heart&Stroke generated health awareness among more than 977,200 Canadians through the Jump Rope for Heart program. In public education, HSC launched online eTools that enabled 36,000 Canadians to assess their risk of heart disease and stroke. HSC also trained 221,000 participants in CPR in F2015. The charity unveiled the Community of Survivors in F2015, providing 700 Canadians with access to survivors of heart disease, heart failure and stroke.

In F2015, Heart&Stroke's research grants to the University of Calgary had a tremendous breakthrough in the treatment of people with a brain stroke (ischemic strokes to be exact, which are 85% of all strokes). Through a new procedure, mortality rates were almost halved from 19% to 10%, and 55% of patients achieved a full recovery compared with 35% for the current procedure. This new procedure could be rolled out across Canada and around the world, improving the health of people with brain strokes.

Heart&Stroke reports that the death rate from heart disease and stroke has declined by more than 75% since 1952. It also reports that 75 years of age is considered a premature death from heart disease, versus 60 years in the 1950s.  Today more than 90% of infants born with complex heart defects reach adulthood, versus 20% in the 1950s.

Financial Review:

Heart&Stroke is one of Canada's largest charities, a Major 100 charity, with donations of $116m in F2015. Donations are stable over the last 3 years.  Administrative costs in F2015 were 4% of revenues, falling from 8% in F2013. Despite being a well-established charity, HSC’s fundraising costs are consistently high at 47% of donations since F2013, exceeding Charity Intelligence's reasonable range.  In F2015 HSC spent $53.9m on fundraising. For every $1 donated to the HSC, 50 cents is put towards its programs and research grants. HSC's lottery funding has dropped from $16.1m in F2013 to a mere $0.7m in F2015 with prizes and marketing costs absorbing most of the $33.7m in lottery ticket sales.

HSC’s funding reserves of $88m in F2015 include $5m in donor-endowed funds. Funding reserves have fallen by $21m since F2013 due to a decrease in cash. Its program cost coverage ratio is 114%, meaning that current reserves would cover 1.1 years of programs and grants. HSC has program and research grant commitments to pay out $40.2m in the next 5 years - 46% of current funding reserves.

Updated on May 10, 2016 by Lynn Tay and November 16, 2016 by Kate Bahen.

Financial Ratios

Fiscal year ending August 		201520142013
Administrative costs as % of revenues 3.7%4.3%7.6%
Fundraising costs as % of donations 46.6%46.9%46.7%
Program cost coverage (%) 110.7%116.2%120.6%

Summary Financial Statements

All figures in $000s 		201520142013
Donations 115,647115,625116,041
Government funding 7,9326,7597,290
Lotteries (net) 70910,19216,132
Investment income 2,4003,0203,881
Other income 9,19953224
Total revenues 135,887136,128143,368
Program costs 48,77054,12552,354
Grants 30,93433,80738,180
Administrative costs 4,9315,74110,604
Fundraising costs 53,92254,22654,129
Cash flow from operations (2,670)(11,771)(11,899)
Funding reserves 88,268102,156109,170
Note: Ci has adjusted endowment contributions and lottery direct costs affecting revenues by ($32.8m) in 2015, by ($49.2m) in 2014 and by ($54.7m) in 2013. Ci has adjusted lottery direct costs, amortization of capital assets and changes to research awards payable affecting expenses by ($36.2m) in 2015, by ($60m) in 2014 and by ($72.6m) in 2013.

Comments added by the Charity:

Comment for Charity Intelligence Profile – December 5, 2016

Heart&Stroke is a national charity with an ambitious vision: “Healthy lives free of heart disease and stroke. Together we will make it happen.” We need Canadians to join with us, as they have over the last 60 years, to help us in our mission to prevent disease, save lives and promote recovery.

Our national strategic plan, launched in 2013, set us on the path to achieving even greater tangible improvement in the health of Canadians. The plan identifies two specific impact goals, and everything we do ladders up to achieving these goals by 2020:

  • Reduce Canadians’ rate of death from heart disease and stroke by 25 per cent
  • Significantly improve the health of Canadians by decreasing their risk factors for heart disease and stroke by 10 per cent

Since Heart&Stroke was established in 1952, we have invested more than $1.45 billion in vital heart and stroke research, making us the largest contributor in Canada after the federal government. In that time, the death rate from heart disease and stroke has declined by more than 75 per cent. Our research grants have led to breakthroughs such as:

  • A hormone that revolutionized how we can control blood pressure, the leading risk factor for stroke;
  • The first heart transplant surgery in Canada;
  • Identification of the risk factors accounting for 90 per cent of all strokes and first heart attacks; and
  • A procedure that cuts stroke deaths by 50 per cent and significantly reduces disability in survivors by quickly pulling the clots out of the brain (ESCAPE trial 2015).

Below are some other recent examples that illustrate the impact we’re having:

  • In 2015, we created – along with the Childhood Obesity Foundation – a coalition of influential national, provincial and regional groups with an interest in promoting nutrition and health to advocate to restrict all commercial marketing of foods and beverages to Canadian children, and were successful in making this an issue during the federal election. Heart&Stroke was the first Canadian organization to call on Canadians to limit the amount of added sugar they consume each day. Too much sugar is linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and high blood cholesterol.
  • In 2015, we released a thought-provoking position statement on saturated fats, calling on Canadian society to think about saturated fats and heart disease in a new way.
  • In 2015, our advocacy efforts led to Nova Scotia and Alberta being the first jurisdictions to introduce a ban on menthol in cigarettes, the most commonly used flavour among youth.
  • Since 2004, we have empowered more than 1 million Canadians to assess their risk of heart disease and stroke, to target high blood pressure (the number one risk factor for stroke and a major risk factor for heart disease), and to make other healthy changes through the use of our free eTools.
  • In 2015, Heart&Stroke continued to provide a range of patient information and resources. We introduced Your Stroke Journey, a free comprehensive guide that helps stroke survivors and their families understand the effects of stroke and manage their recovery process.
  • In 2015, Heart&Stroke unveiled our Community of Survivors, a network of nearly 700 Canadians who have experienced heart disease, heart failure or stroke and are interested in improving their recovery. This group engaged in a variety of work, including being spokespeople during stroke month and testing the use of online technology for helping manage recovery.
  • In 2015, Heart&Stroke committed $1.5 million over five years (matched by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) to the Canadian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (CanROC), an ambitious, multi-provincial initiative aimed at improving survival rates from cardiac arrest by ensuring that all Canadians, regardless of their location, receive excellent care, from bystander response and early defibrillation through to advanced pre-hospital care.
  • In 2015, Heart&Stroke funded research in regenerative medicine that could be a game changer for patients with heart failure. A heart transplant is the only solution for advanced heart failure but research that is close to being translated into therapy could help the heart to repair itself after a heart attack.

Heart&Stroke is committed to providing the highest level of financial responsibility and transparency around our operations. We believe in monitoring and measuring our performance on an ongoing basis; continuously reviewing which programs and activities deliver higher returns and identifying ways to increase revenue so we can have even more impact against our mission. We continue, as always, to be strongly committed to improving the efficiency of our organization. We are confident that the strategic investments we made in becoming one organization will ensure the longer term success and efficiency of the HSC – leading to meaningful improvements in the health of Canadians.

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