Founded in 2008, Unity Charity’s mission is to use hip-hop to improve young people’s lives and create healthier communities. Unity offers its programming free of charge to youth in underserved neighborhoods in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Northern Alberta, and British Columbia. Its two main programs, Inspire and Engage, are provided at schools and community spaces and have reached 41,420 youth across Canada. Unity’s goal is to reach 150,000 youth by 2019.

The Inspire programs include the Unity Day Assembly, Unity Day Festival, Unity Bookings, and its Alumni Program. At these programs, Unity artists perform and share personal stories about how art triggered a positive change in their lives to increase awareness of the importance of community, stress management, and mental health.

Engage is Unity’s after-school and community hip-hop dance program where participants are given structured lesson plans and goals. In F2016, Unity held 10 after-school and 13 community weekly Engage programs with 332 total participants.

Unity Charity surveys its participants and found that 78% of after-school program participants agreed the program helped them develop leadership skills, 75% learned new ways to express stress, 74% became more understanding of other people’s feelings, and 55% felt safer at a Unity program than other places.

Unity Charity is a medium-sized charity with donations of $1m in F2016. Its administrative costs are 15% of revenues, and its fundraising costs are 12% of donations. For every dollar donated, 73 cents go towards Unity’s programs, falling within Ci’s reasonable range. The charity has funding reserves of $446k, resulting in a program cost coverage ratio of 50%. This means that the charity can cover 6 months of its annual program costs using its existing reserves, showing a need for funding.

This charity report is an update that is being reviewed by Unity Charity. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated June 28, 2017 by Kevin Silberberg.