FH Canada

About FH Canada:

Founded in 1988, Food for the Hungry Canada or FH Canada (FHC) is part of the global Food for the Hungry association dedicated to ending poverty one community at a time. FHC works directly with communities to help them to “graduate out of poverty”, or become independent and sustainable, within ten years. FH Canada takes an integrated approach towards eradicating poverty, with programs focused on education, health, livelihood, and leadership and gender equality. FHC has operations in Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Haiti, and Guatemala. 

In F2018, FH Canada worked with 71 communities in eight countries. Some highlights of FHC’s education programs include a total of 8,059 children sponsored, nine classrooms and one teacher office built in Burundi, and 48 literacy groups established in Bangladesh.  Some highlights of FHC’s health programs include 1,532 patients helped at mobile medical clinics in Haiti and 1,000 households that received tippy taps for hand washing. FHC’s livelihood programs trained 486 farmers in Rwanda about restorative agriculture practices, distributed a total of 5,823 farm animals, and established savings and loans groups to help 959 people in Bangladesh, 94% of whom were women. FHC’s leadership and gender equality programs ran gender equality workshops for 439 people in Ethiopia and trained 199 community leaders in Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, in leadership, planning, and goal setting. 

Results and Impact:

Food for the Hungry Canada reports that it works with communities so that they can “graduate out of poverty” and become independent within about ten years. This year, FHC celebrated four communities in Burundi for becoming independent. In addition, communities that ran literacy groups in Bangladesh saw a 29% increase in women’s literacy rates. Cambodia saw a 24% increase in the number of families using a clean toilet, and 93% of pregnant women in Guatemala now consult a medical professional for prenatal care, thanks to FHC’s health programs.  

Financial Review:

Food for the Hungry Canada is a medium-sized charity, receiving $6.3m in donations in F2018. FH Canada also received $4.8m in donated goods in kind, representing 40% of its total revenues. Its administrative costs are 5% of revenues and its fundraising costs are 19% of donations. For every dollar donated, 76 cents go to FH Canada’s programs. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. FH Canada’s funding reserves were $598k in F2018, which can cover less than one month of its annual program costs.  

FH Canada uses external fundraisers as part of its fundraising activities.  FHC paid external fundraisers $407k to raise $2.1m in F2016, producing an external fundraising cost ratio of 20%.  

This charity report is an update that was sent to FH Canada for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming. 

Updated on June 5, 2019 by Caroline McKenna.