Founded in 2004, Speroway is a Christian relief and humanitarian charity that responds to the needs of children and their families in Canada and around the world. Through partnerships with other relief and development organizations, Speroway gives food, clothing, medicine, education and other essentials to needy children. The charity works in Malawi, Kenya, Haiti, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Nepal. Speroway's four core programs are Food & Nutrition, Education, Healthcare, and Emergency Relief & Disaster Response.  

Speroway's Food & Nutrition programming includes school feeding programs, malnutrition programs, agriculture projects and a food distribution program in Canada. Speroway's Gift-In-Kind (GIK) program distributes food in Canada and globally – the charity states that roughly 4 million Canadians, including 1.15 million children, suffer from malnutrition or live with unstable food access. The charity reports that it distributed over 25 million meals to hungry children through its GIK program over the past several years.  Through its school feeding programs, community feeding programs and sponsorship programs, Speroway reports giving almost 80,000 meals monthly in Malawi, over 2,000 meals monthly in Haiti and almost 11,000 meals monthly to kids in Kenya.  

Education programming focuses on breaking the poverty cycle by improving accessibility to quality education. Speroway runs children's education programs, gives secondary and post-secondary scholarships, offers life-skills training and runs community education initiatives.

Healthcare programming includes malnutrition programs, deworming programs, community health initiatives, and basic healthcare & medicines programs. The charity's Emergency Relief & Disaster Response programs offer immediate relief and long-term response to areas affected by natural disasters, conflicts, and other emergencies.  

Results and Impact: Speroway reports that 69 students enrolled in the Wezesha scholarship program in 2016, where the charity hopes to empower youth in Kenya through education. Enrolment increased 44% from the year before.  

Notice to Reader: In 2017, Ci received unaudited documents from the CRA after making a formal request for Speroway’s F2015 audited financial statements. As a result, Ci’s F2015 analysis of Speroway uses unaudited figures. In 2018, Speroway has provided F2017 audited financial statements that include unaudited F2016 figures.

Speroway is a medium-sized charity with donations of $1.0m in F2017. Administrative costs are 2% of revenues and fundraising costs are 17% of donations. Reported fundraising costs have fluctuated significantly between F2015 and F2017. For every dollar donated to the charity, 81 cents go to the cause, which falls within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

The charity holds funding reserves of $467k. Excluding the cost of donated goods, funds can cover under 8 months of program costs. When including the cost of donated goods, coverage drops to under a month. These program coverage ratios indicate a need for funding.

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

Financial Review updated on August 2, 2018 by Joeyanne Cheung. Information about the charity’s programs was updated on June 15, 2017 by Katie Khodawandi.