Category: uncategorized

Excessive fundraising by charities is not a joke

Donors must independently figure out if a charity actually needs the money it is asking for. Charity Intelligence’s reports may help. This year, intelligent giving matters more than ever.
As featured in https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-excessive-fundraising-by-charities-is-not-a-joke Calgary Herald 
Nearly 20 years ago, Harvard Business Review published a startling finding. Some charities fundraise because they can, not because they need money. One would hope that charities would only fundraise when they need money. One would hope, especially now with an economic recession coupled with a global pandemic, campaigns to raise excessive funds would halt. Sadly, no.
Fundraising campaigns that bring in more money than needed create surpluses. These surpluses accumulate funding reserves. Charities need these reserves as a buffer against unexpected costs or market fluctuations. Yet today donors need to look extra hard at the appropriate amount of these funding reserves.
Here is one recent example, one of many: a moderately-sized Calgary charity has enough cash to run its charity programs for seven years. Seven years. It has enough money to operate at current levels for seven years without raising another penny. Yet now it is launching a new campaign to raise even more money.
I asked this charity’s management team “How much is enough? Is there a threshold when it will stop fundraising since it does not need money? Is 10 years of program coverage enough? Or 15 years?”
The answer was giggles. Perhaps nervous laughter. But going after scarce donations it does not need is not a joke.
It is also offside of regulatory guidelines. The Charities Directorate’s guidance against excessive fundraising states that “when a charity has sufficient income for its uses or needs, the need for new fundraising may be questionable.” Yet these are just guidelines without enforcement.
Maybe charity directors should consider the greater community needs before approving a new fundraising campaign? Many frontline charities are facing an unprecedented surge in demand, yet with small reserves to sustain their operations. Are charities that fundraise while holding large surpluses considering these sector-wide needs? Apparently not.
Without checks and balances, donors must independently figure out if a charity actually needs the money it is asking for.
Charity Intelligence’s reports may help. Every report on a charity has a financial review section that shows three numbers for the recent years: 1. a charity’s funding reserves, 2. its spending on charity programs and, 3. the percent that funding reserves cover annual program spending – the program coverage ratio. During COVID, Charity Intelligence recommends donors support charities with less than 150% coverage – that’s 1.5 years of funding.
Typically, donors hyper-focus on a charity’s cents to the cause – how much of every donation goes to charity programs after fundraising costs and administrative overhead. In these dire times donors need to pivot and also review a charity’s balance sheet. Donors need to ask how much money a charity already has in reserves to assess the real value of their donation.
This year, philanthropic giving matters more than ever. Imagine Canada estimates individual giving will decline by between $4.2 billion and $6.3 billion, a 25%-36% drop. Funding reserves are nice to have for unforeseen circumstances and rainy days. But well-off charities should now tap their reserves, rather than asking for more. And donors should consider whether their gifts will idle in investment accounts, or go to those most in need.
 
https://www.charityintelligence.ca/research-and-news/ci-views/31-disaster-response/657-covid-19-picks Charity Intelligence’s top-rated frontline charities in covid response
More Ci articles about excessive fundraising:
https://www.charityintelligence.ca/research-and-news/ci-views/31-disaster-response/650-like-toilet-paper-hoarders-some-charities-unnecessarily-filling-reserves Like toilet paper hoarders, some charities are fundraising despite having years of funding reserves to weather the coronavirus pandemic, March 24, 2020
Charity Intelligence’s https://www.charityintelligence.ca/component/charities/?k=calgary&start=0 reports on 64 of Calgary’s largest donor-supported charities
 
Comments added: Anne B: 

Read More

Charity Intelligence moves to 5-star charity rating

When the global giants like Google, Apple, Uber, and The Times move to 5-star ratings, it sets the standard people use. With this ubiquity, Charity Intelligence’s 4-star rating led to confusion. Too often charities said “we’re rated 4 stars out of 5” by Charity Intelligence. Except Charity Intelligence did not have a 5-star category.
We do now. Today we shift our star ratings to the 5-star standard. The highest rating is 5-stars, and the lowest rating is 0-star. The ratings are based on objective measures covering results reporting, cost efficiency, need for funding, financial transparency, and demonstrated impact (see https://www.charityintelligence.ca/giving-with-impact/understanding-our-ratings Understanding our Ratings methodology).
The highest 5-star rating is reserved for the https://www.charityintelligence.ca/research-and-news/ci-views/33-donor-giving/643-top-100-rated-charities Top 100 highest-rated charities. This is the elite of charities analysed. It is important to know that different charity raters have different systems. In the US, Charity Navigator, gives the highest star ratings to 40% of the charities it rates. We give the highest star rating to 13% of charities. Our intent is for 5-stars to be a marker of excellence for donors.
With a 5-star rating being an exceptionally high mark, we hope donors will also review 4-star rated charities in making giving decisions.
 

5 stars, but 6 categories

The 5-star ratings have six categories: exceptional, good, acceptable, underperforming, poor, and very poor.

Charity Intelligence is reserving the lowest, 0-star rating only for charities that have a double failure; a failure to meet basic transparency and accountability.  This is a small (3%) proportion of charities. This is an area where Charity Intelligence has serious concerns.
To see all the star ratings on over 800 charities, https://www.charityintelligence.ca/component/osmembership/?Itemid=101 subscribe for $20 a year.

 
Positive skew to rating distribution 

As before, Charity Intelligence’s star rating is positively skewed. Our star rating distribution has twice as many 5-star and 4-star charities (33%) than 1-star and zero-star charities (16%).  Together, 5-star and 4-star charities represent a third of the charities analysed. Our middle ratings of 3 and 2 stars account for 50% of charities.
This positive skew is unchanged in the migration from the old 4-star rating to the new 5-star rating.

Charity ratings are desired by donors and disked by some charity professionals. We believe ratings are one useful tool for donors to see how a charity compares with other charities on objective measures.
For charities, these objective measures show areas for improvement. Since Charity Intelligence launched its ratings in 2014, there have been tangible improvements:

    Read More

practice table Top 100 2020

                  

BC SPCA
Boundless School
Indspire
Pathways to Education
Read More

2020 Top 100 Rated Charities

Charity Intelligence’s Top 100 Rated Charities is a list of outstanding charities you can support with confidence this giving season. This list has the 100 charities with the highest point totals based on our rating methodology on 800 charities.
These Top 100 charities:  

  • are leaders in reporting to donors with an average results reporting score 44% higher than the average of all charities we have analysed,
  • are cost efficient with overhead spending averaging 19%, compared to an average of 27% for all charities we have analysed,
  • need support – none have more than three years of funding reserves,
  • are all financially transparent

In addition, 46 of these 100 charities have been rated for impact with 12 rating as High impact, 15 as Good impact, and 19 as Average impact per dollar spent.
New tool for you to give
Each Canadian has unique giving interests. Some donors support local charities, some support international charities. Some prefer giving to smaller charities.
With this interactive excel table, click on the column that matches your giving interest, and filter to your heart’s content. You can sort the list of charities by city, by province, by sector, by size, by overhead spending, etc. The choice is yours.
When you want more information, click on the charity name. This is linked to Charity Intelligence’s most recent report on the charity. 
View the 
Please note: These scores and ratings are as at October 20, 2020 based on Charity Intelligence’s most recent analysis. Fiscal years vary. Charity ratings are dynamic and are subject to change as charities improve their transparency, accountability, cost-efficiency and program spending.
 
We are trying to make this list easier for you to filter by. In the meantime, to sort this list by your giving priorities:
1. Click anywhere in the blue heading area
2. Click Data in the top menu headings
3. Choose Filter Views
4. Choose Create New Temporary Filter View
This allows you to sort the list. To the right of each column title (like sector, donations, etc.) is a small upside-down triangle. Click on this to sort each filter by your preference. 
Alternatively, here is the images/2019_Top_100_Charities_for_pdf.pdf” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer 2020 Top 100 Rated Charities list in a pdf. 
 

Key Findings in 2020

 
Excellence comes in all sizes. On this 2019 Top 100 list, 12 charities are “small”.  We define any charity receiving less than $1 million in donations as “small”. The smallest charity on the 2019 Top 100 list is East York Learning Experience in Toronto that received $37,000 in donations. At the other end of the spectrum are eight charities each receiving over $100 million annually in donations, topped by University of British Columbia (UBC) that received $208 million in donations.
Charity Intelligence has reports on approximately 185 “small” Canadian charities, approximately 25% of our charity reports. We continue to find outstanding giving opportunities in these less-known charities.
New charities. Also new in 2020 are 16 charities making their first appearance on the Top 100 list.
Better donor reporting than ever before. This year, some charities have made exceptional efforts to provide excellent annual reports to donors on what they do, who they help, and the results they achieve.
For example, Greater Vancouver Food Bank’s donor reporting grade improved 57% to an A grade.

When I joined the food bank, this was one of my goals. We are proud of the progress …. We really wanted an A+, and will certainly try for that next time.”

text-align: right;
margin-top: 0cm; background: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 1rem; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; word-spacing: 0px;

Read More

No justice, no peace

Recommendations to support anti-Black racism organizations.

 
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html Letter from a Birmingham jail is as profound today as in 1963 and well worth reading in full. You have the time. As a white moderate, The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter guides my recommendations to you. I ask myself how I can best change, learn, and support Black civil rights.
In matters of ‘law and order’, law trumps order.  Justice is the foundation of peace, and peace without justice is false. Let us rise from our ‘shallow understanding’ to learn deeply. Now, not later.
While media may focus on American protests, there is extensive anti-Black racism and police brutality in Canada. This is intolerable. I favour giving to Canadian civil rights groups.
In response to your requests on how to give to support anti-Black racism, here is my model of thinking, how I sort through your suggestions. I structure needs in a hierarchy. There are so many worthy causes yet our financial resources are finite. We must give intelligently. Dollars given to a nice organization entails fewer dollars to a high impact organization. Being nice has opportunity costs we can ill afford.
In this hierarchy of needs, saving lives or averting deaths is tops. As I see it the urgent need is security – security of life, security to live without fear of state brutality and harassment. In our democracy, no Canadian should fear violence from police. We do not need new laws. We need our constitutional rights upheld for all.
I recommend focusing support on Black civil rights, legal support, and social justice organizations. Police brutality must stop. No person or organization is above the law. This unaccountability must be brought before the courts. To me, civil rights are more urgent than youth opportunities.
Hierarchy of needs

 
Ways to support social justice in Canada
These are not registered charities. You support because you believe in their work, not for a tax deduction.
Black Lives Matter has chapters in Toronto and Vancouver: https://blacklivesmatter.ca/ Black Lives Matter Toronto and https://blacklivesmattervancouver.com/about-us/ Black Lives Matter Vancouver. These are radical activists at the forefront of anti-Black racism. Black Lives Matter has successfully raised international awareness and is a key driver in advocating change. Black Lives Matter also offers tangible support. In one example, when a Black business was raided by police, Black Lives Matter Toronto gave money for the smashed windows and missing cash.
Also in Ontario, https://www.blacklegalactioncentre.ca/ Black Legal Action Centre (BLAC)  founded in 2017 is a non-profit legal clinic providing free legal services to Blacks. It carries on the work of the African-Canadian Legal Clinic that closed. BLAC is funded through Legal Aid Ontario. With a team of three full-time lawyers, BLAC is led by Ruth Goba, formerly with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. BLAC’s annual budget is $850,000. Its focus is fighting racial profiling by police and educational inequality where Black children are disproportionately disciplined and expelled from Toronto schools. #_edn1″ name=”_ednref1 [i]
Beyond financial support, look also at how you can support anti-Black racism in your community. Policing is a municipal responsibility. Create solidarity with your Black community in the fight for social justice. I review local news articles, specifically looking for mention of civil justice organizations that are commended.
Community activist El Jones says, “I am suspicious of government plans for change.” Political change comes from grassroot efforts – “from the bottom up” – and involves shaming public institutions into action. #_edn2″ name=”_ednref2 [ii] I concur. I too am skeptical of commissions and panels, conferences and recommendations.  I see the most effective change coming from local, community-led initiatives supported by many.
 
Registered charities you have asked that we look at:
http://blackhealthalliance.ca/ Black Health Alliance focuses on Black health issues like how racism triggers stress-reduction with greater prevalence of smoking, and how racial inequities are a fundamental cause in worse health. Its focus is on eliminating Black racism in healthcare. Health is a public right. However, right now Black health would fall in my Blue zone – long term, not urgent for now.
Similarly https://ceetoronto.org/ Careers Education Empowerment Centre for Young Black Professionals, a registered charity that addresses the economic and social barriers affecting Black youth. Founded in April 2018, CEE Centre has a $900,000 operating budget supported by foundations and governments and a full-time staff of 9.
https://www.crrf-fcrr.ca/en/ Canadian Race Relations Foundation is a crown corporation charity that was established by the Federal Government with a $23 million endowment. It was formed in 1988 with the reconciliation towards Japanese Canadians for their incarceration during World War II. Its work is research and data collection, to be an information resource centre, to facilitate consultation, professional training and to raise public awareness. I believe now the urgent need is to focus on anti-Black racism: “Black lives” rather than “All lives”. CRR Foundation reports total operating costs of $1 million with 5 full-time staff. One concern raised by communities is the creation of anti-racism organizations that do not speak for the community but are rather seen as a government public relations exercise.
https://ccla.org/staff-and-board/ Canadian Civil Liberties Association is a new charity. As such, no filings or information is yet available. From its website, it looks like its primary area of experience is in LGBTQ rights. Again, focus support on anti-Black racism.
http://taibuchc.ca/en/home/ TAIBU Community Health Clinic provides primary health care services to the Black and Indigenous communities in Malvern and Scarborough, Ontario. Its focus is addressing chronic health conditions that disproportionately affect the Black community like diabetes, hypertension, cancer, sickle cell diseases and mental health. TAIBU has annual operating costs of $5.6 million with $5.5 million coming from government funding.
 
How to research an organization:
In looking into groups and organizations, visit their website. For Black social justice, I look at its staff and board. I want to see it that its leadership is from the Black community.
 
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birmingham Jail letter calls out our “shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-well.” To rise beyond our ‘shallow understanding’, I recommend reading Canadian Desmond Cole’s book The Skin We’re In. We read the one-off news stories of racist incidents. Cole connects the dots and shows the pattern. His chapters on police anti-Black brutality are harrowing. Anti-Black racism is not predominantly an American issue – it thrives in Canada. With this deeper understanding, let people of goodwill build social justice in Canada.
Please suggest other organizations to review.
 
Sources:
#_ednref1″ name=”_edn1 [i] Raizel Robin,  “ https://lawandstyle.ca/career/best-practices-how-ruth-goba-plans-to-fight-anti-black-racism-in-the-province/ How Ruth Goba plans to fight anti-black racism in the province.” The Precedent, December 4, 2018
#_ednref2″ name=”_edn2 [ii] Halifax Today “ https://www.halifaxtoday.ca/local-news/police-need-to-build-trust-with-nova-scotias-black-communities-panelists-2068536 Police need to build trust with Nova Scotia’s Black communities: experts discussed the provincial government’s Count Us In report.” February 4, 2020
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/news/canada/systemic-racism-behind-violent-walmart-arrest-retired-cop-399795/ Interesting article from a retired Black Halifax police officer.
 
Legal disclaimer: Sorry, but in this day and age …. The information in this report was prepared by Kate Bahen independently of Charity Intelligence Canada from publicly available information. I have made no endeavours to ensure that this public data is accurate and complete. I accept no liability.
My views and opinions expressed are to inform donors on matters of public interest. Views and opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, organization, individual, or anyone or anything. Any dispute arising from your use of this website or viewing the material hereon shall be governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario, without regard to any conflict of law provisions.

Read More

LATEST

Most Popular

Want to browse our charities?
SUBSCRIBE to view all star ratings.

Share

Charity Intelligence researches Canadian charities for donors to be informed and give intelligently. Our website posts free reports on more than 800 Canadian charities, as well as in-depth primers on philanthropic sectors like Canada’s environment, cancer, and homelessness. Today over 500,000 Canadians use our website as a go-to source for information on Canadian charities reading over 1.6 million charity reports. Through rigorous and independent research, Charity Intelligence aims to assist Canada’s dynamic charitable sector in being more transparent, accountable and focused on results.

Be Informed. Give Intelligently. Have Impact.

Charitable Registration Number: 80340 7956 RR0001