Alice House is an average 3-star charity with low overhead spending but no financial transparency. The charity has a slightly below-average results reporting grade due to the lack of reported program outcomes. 

Founded in 1983, Alice House provides safe housing, counselling, and support services for women and their children who have experienced intimate partner violence. According to the charity, women are four times as likely as men to be victims of intimate partner homicide. Alice House estimates that up to 362,000 children experience family violence in Canada annually. The charity has four main programs: Safe Housing, Counselling and Programs for Women, Counselling and Programs for Children and Youth, and Education and Prevention. The charity has not provided a breakdown of expenses among its programs.

In its Safe Housing program, Alice House operates 18 housing units across Halifax. It rents these units to women at 60% below the market rate. In F2021, the charity housed 25 women and 28 children. Due to covid-19, Alice House pivoted its operations to offer food bank access and essential supplies to its clients. In F2021, The charity delivered over 160 food boxes through food security initiatives.

Counselling and Programs for Women and Youth are the charity's on-site support services for women and children. Alice House operates a trauma-informed counselling program that helps women and children heal from experiencing and witnessing intimate partner violence. In F2021, Alice House delivered over 600 counselling sessions for 35 women and 345 counselling sessions for 29 children. In addition to counselling programs, Alice House delivered 103 play kits to children and youth.

Education and Prevention is Alice House's final main program. The charity operates a prevention and education program called Alice on the Go. Participants learn how to identify abusive behaviours, disrupt cycles of violence, and create healthy relationships. In F2021, 55 women participated in Alice on the Go. In addition, the charity made 13 educational videos distributed to schools in the Halifax Regional Municipality on topics including consent and diversity.

Alice House is a small charity in term of donations, with $542k in donations in F2021. The charity also received $293k in government funding, representing 30% of total revenues. Administrative costs are 8% of revenues (less investment income), and fundraising costs are 1% of donations. This means that total overhead spending is 8%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 92 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci's reasonable range for overhead spending. Alice House has funding reserves of $784k which can cover just over 1 year of annual program costs.

Alice House only posts summarized financial statements on its website and full audited financial statements are only available upon request. As such, Charity Intelligence has not scored Alice House as fully transparent.

This report is an update that has been sent to Alice House for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated May 31, 2022 by Ann Lei.