Founded in 1918, The War Amputations of Canada (War Amps) works to improve the quality of life for all Canadian amputees, including veterans and children. It aims to provide funding for artificial limbs, help children develop a positive outlook on life, and support amputees through awareness programs. The War Amputations of Canada’s national headquarters is in Ottawa.

In F2019, the charity’s three largest programs included the Key Tag Service Division, the CHAMP program, and Advocacy.

The Key Tag Service Division made up 45% of program costs in F2019. War Amps’ key tag programs consist of two main components. Through the key tag service, all Canadians can register for coded tags to attach to their key rings. If someone later finds a lost key ring with a War Amps tag, they can place the keys in any Canadian mailbox and War Amps will return them to their owner. War Amps states that it helped return 10,222 keys in 2018 and more than 1.5 million keys since founding. The other main component of War Amps’ key tag program involves a workshop program. War Amps specifically employs amputees and people with disabilities at workshops that produce the key tags.

The Child Amputee (CHAMP) program made up 24% of program costs in F2019. Through the CHAMP program, War Amps provides comprehensive support to child amputees and their families. This includes funding to buy prosthetic limbs, educational sessions, parenting resources, and peer support programs.

Advocacy programs were 9% of program costs in F2019. War Amps advocates on behalf of amputees to increase healthcare funding and protect against discrimination based on disability. War Amps states that it is part of four out of six advisory groups to Veteran’s Affairs Canada. It is also a member of the National Council of Veteran Associations in Canada, a coalition of more than 60 distinct veteran interest groups.

The remaining 22% of program costs included funding for adult amputees, safe driving awareness programs, and resources for amputees.

War Amps does not disclose full administrative and fundraising costs on its audited financial statements, which are posted online. The charity instead provides its full overhead spending figures on its T3010 filing with the CRA, which is only available for F2018. The charity states that it will file its F2019 T3010 in September 2020. Administrative and fundraising costs are likely understated for F2019.

The War Amputations of Canada is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada’s largest charities, with $42.0m in donations in F2019. This includes $34.4m in tax-receipted key tag revenue, representing 80% of total revenues. Administrative costs are under 1% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs are under 1% of donations. This results in total overhead spending of 1%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 99 cents go to the cause. This falls outside Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending, as charities reporting more than 95 cents to the cause may be underreporting their overhead costs.

In F2018, the most recent year that full overhead costs could be obtained from CRA filings, administrative costs were 9% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs were 2% of donations. This resulted in total overhead spending of 10%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 90 cents went to the cause. This fell within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

War Amps has $40.3m in funding reserves, of which $158k is donor-endowed. Excluding donor-endowed funds, the charity could cover around 1.2 years of annual program costs with its existing reserves.

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

Updated on August 20, 2020 by Eric Zhao.