CanadaHelps is a five-star charity. It has an above average results reporting score, is fully financially transparent and spent less than one percent of donations on overhead costs.

Founded in 2000, CanadaHelps simplifies giving with its online platform for donations. Its website helps donors send funds to charities of their choice. It also stores donation receipts. CanadaHelps also provides charities with fundraising platforms and donor management tools. CanadaHelps receives cash donations and donated securities on behalf of charities across Canada. To cover its costs, it distributes the funds to charities for a processing fee of between 2% (security donations over $100k) and 4% (one-time donations).

In F2022 CanadaHelps gave out $420.6m in donations. Since 2000, CanadaHelps reports that it has raised over $2 billion. In F2022, Canadians donated to more than 30,455 charities through CanadaHelps.

CanadaHelps helps charities by streamlining the donation process and reducing overhead costs. It offers customizable donation forms, ticketed event pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, and monthly donation options. CanadaHelps also reports that in F2022, it had 1,393 new charity partners. In F2020, CanadaHelps launched its Donor Management System (DMS). The system stores donor data and helps charities track patterns in donations. As of F2022, 591 charities are using DMS. CanadaHelps hosts free webinars to help charities improve their online fundraising. In F2022, more than 1,216 fundraising professionals attended their webinars.

CanadaHelps aims to help Canadians donate with ease. It also aims to engage more people in charitable giving. In F2022, CanadaHelps launched United for Change, the new website for the Cause Funds initiative. The Cause Funds initiative encourages more young people to donate to charity. In F2022, Cause Funds received $858k in donations. In F2022, five new Cause Funds were launched: the Period Equity Fund, the International Covid-19 Relief Fund, the Ukraine Emergency Relief Fund, the Climate Change Policy Fund and the Land and Food Justice Fund. CanadaHelps launched a new annual campaign: Make It Monthly. Its aim is to help charities have monthly donors and have a consistent source of funding. CanadaHelps also publishes an annual Giving Report to provide data on Canada’s charitable sector.

CanadaHelps received $437.4m in donations in F2022, up 45% from $301.4m in F2020. In F2022, CanadaHelps distributed $420.6m in donor-designated grants, compared to $280.1m in F2020.

CanadaHelps' audited financial statements do not disclose activity-based costing. Charity Intelligence has used its information filed in its annual T3010 return for cost allocations. Administrative costs are less than 1% of revenues and fundraising costs as a percentage of donations are virtually zero. Nearly all dollars donated go to the cause.

This is not within Ci's reasonable range for overhead spending, which is between 65 and 95 cents. However, given the low-cost nature of this charity, this likely does not raise any concerns about understated overhead costs.

CanadaHelps has $4.6m in reserve funds. These are CanadaHelps’ cash and investments. With its current reserve funds, the charity can cover 28% or about 3 months of program costs.

Charity Intelligence has sent this update to CanadaHelps for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 9, 2023 by Alessandra Castino.