Founded in 1993, Hospice of Waterloo Region (Hospice of Waterloo) provides palliative hospice care to people in the Kitchener-Waterloo region. It follows a “whole person” model of care in its activities, meaning that it works to improve the quality of life for not just its patients, but also for caregivers and family members. Hospice of Waterloo states in its F2019 annual report that the number of seniors requiring care is set to double over the next 15 years and more than 8 million Canadians provide informal care to loved ones, of which one in ten spend more than 30 hours per week providing care.

Hospice of Waterloo’s primary activity is providing client services for palliative patients and their loved ones. This includes a Volunteer Visiting program, where patients are paired one-to-one with a trained hospice volunteer who makes weekly home visits for emotional and practical support. Hospice volunteers must complete 33 hours of palliative care training. Other services include transportation assistance, specialized vigiling services for people in their final hours of life, a Day Away group support program, and complementary therapies. Professional counselling (including bereavement) is available for individuals, families, and caregivers. All of Hospice of Waterloo’s programs and services are free for clients. Referrals to the hospice can be made by doctors, family members, or friends. Client services programs helped 1,281 people in F2019. Hospice volunteers delivered 14,654 hours of service during the year, including 345 vigiling hours, 496 transportation hours, and 386 hours of complementary therapies (such as massage therapy).  

In addition to client services, Hospice of Waterloo runs education and training programs for doctors in the palliative sector and teachers working with bereaved students. In F2019, the charity distributed 3,205 resources and educated 3,360 healthcare providers on palliative care. Hospice of Waterloo also runs a community engagement program to improve accessibility to palliative care resources in the community. It reached 990 people through community engagement workshops in F2019.

Hospice of Waterloo began construction of a new hospice palliative care center – the Gies Family Centre – in September 2018. The center will be 28,000 square feet and contain a residential wing with 10 hospice beds to provide in-patient care. The center will also house a medical clinic, provide counselling, support groups and day programs for patients and families, and run palliative care education programs for doctors and community members. Set to open in spring 2020 with total costs estimated at $15 million, the center will be Waterloo’s first hospice offering in-house, medical palliative care.

Hospice of Waterloo is a medium-sized charity that received $4.9m in donations in F2019. Donations grew by 170% from F2018 to F2019 (505% from F2017 to F2018), likely due to the charity’s capital campaign for the new Gies Family Centre build. Government funding, which comes mostly from the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network, accounted for 54% of total revenues over the past three years.  Administrative costs are 3% of revenue (excluding investment income) and fundraising costs are 3% of donations. Per dollar donated, 94 cents go to the cause, which is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

Hospice of Waterloo’s audited financial statements do not allocate salaries to program, administrative and fundraising costs. Ci reported total salaries in program costs ($1.5m in F2019, $1.6m in F2018, $1.6m in F2017) and as such, overhead spending is likely understated. The charity’s F2019 T3010 CRA filing was not available at the time of this profile update. The F2018 filing reported administrative costs of $227k and fundraising costs of $176k, producing an overhead spending ratio of 17%. This means that 83 cents of every donated dollar went to the cause in F2018, which is within Ci’s reasonable range.   

Funding reserves of $3.4m include $3.8m in donor-restricted funds for future capital asset spending (to finance the Gies Family Centre build) and donor-endowed funds. Excluding restricted and endowed funds, the charity’s reserves could cover annual program costs at the F2019 level for four months. Hospice of Waterloo’s funding reserves have grown substantially from F2017 to F2019 as the charity has been raising money for the new Centre.

This report is an update that has been sent to Hospice of Waterloo for review. Comments and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on August 30, 2019 by Katie Khodawandi.