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 over 250,000 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. In F2018, Unity Charity reports that over 160 bookings were made in Ontario for workshops, conferences and corporate bookings. In addition, the charity reports that Unity Day alone, reached over 40,000 students.

Engage is Unity’s after-school and community hip-hop dance program where participants are given structured lesson plans and goals. In F2018, Unity Charity held 8 after-school, 8 community weekly Engage programs and 4 community arts and culture programs.

Unity Charity is a medium-sized charity with donations of $1.2m in F2018. Its administrative costs are 14% of revenues (excluding investment income), and its fundraising costs are 13% of donations. For every dollar donated, 74 cents go to the cause, which is within Ci’s reasonable range.

The charity has funding reserves of $509k, resulting in a program cost coverage ratio of 48%. This means that the charity can cover nearly 6 months of its annual program costs using its existing reserves.

This charity report is an update that has been sent to Unity Charity for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated August 21, 2019 by Parker Thomlinson.