Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind is a two-star charity with a low results reporting grade and reasonable overhead spending. The charity is financially transparent and has high funding reserves that can cover over nine years of program costs.

Founded in 1984, Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind (CGDB) is a charity that helps visually impaired Canadians by providing them with trained guide dogs. The charity trains guide dogs at its national training centre in Manotick, Ontario. In F2021, CGDB spent $1.5m on its program.

Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind provides two types of dogs as a part of its program. It offers professionally trained guide dogs for visually impaired clients and mobility assistance dogs for those with movement-inhibiting disabilities. Guide dogs are offered nationwide and assistance dogs are offered to people within a 200-km radius of Ottawa. To qualify for a guide dog you must be physically capable of walking a dog regularly. Clients can lease a dog for a symbolic payment of $1 and are responsible for its food and medical expenses throughout its working life. CGDB has a Veterinary Cost Assistance Fund that covers routine visits to the veterinarian.

The charity reports that by January of 2021, it had successfully trained over 900 guide dogs since its inception. This means that CGDB graduated an average of around 24 dogs per year from its training program. If the charity trained an average of 24 dogs in each of the past three years, the average operating cost per dog was $75,126 and the average amount of donations per dog was $229,253. In 2020, it opened a new dog kennel in its national training centre.  

Ci has consolidated CGDB with its foundation for financial analysis. As the foundation’s financial statements are not available at this time, Ci used its T3010 filing with the CRA to report its financials. In F2021, the charity sent $3.5m to the foundation.

Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind received $5.5m in Canadian donations and fundraising revenue in F2021, representing a 37% increase from F2020. It earned $1.1m in investment income during the year (16% of total revenue), representing a 14% annual return. Its average annual investment return since F2012 is 5%. The average annual investment return of the S&P 500 from 2012 to 2021 is around 15%. 

Administrative costs are 3% of total revenue excluding investment income. Fundraising costs are 3% of donations and fundraising revenue. This results in total overhead spending of 6%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 94 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

CGDB has $13.9m in net funding reserves, including $318k in donor-endowed funds. The charity’s net funding reserves, excluding donor-endowed funds, can cover annual program costs for around nine years and six months. In F2019, CGDB reported paying external fundraisers $14k on its T3010 filing, but the money raised by these efforts is not disclosed. This disclosure is required in a charity’s annual reporting.

This report is an update that has been sent to Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 11th, 2022 by Arjun Kapur.