University of Ottawa is a four-star charity and one of Canada's largest charities in terms of donations. As with most large universities, it has a high results reporting grade and is financially transparent. Although the charity has overhead spending within Ci's reasonable range, it has high fundraising costs resulting in a rating of four stars.

Founded in 1948, University of Ottawa is a public research university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is the largest bilingual (English-French) university in the world. The university has ten faculties and schools that offer 550 programs to students, including 350 programs open to undergraduate students. Its main charitable programs are Education, Research, and Renovations, for which it does not provide a spending breakdown. 

In F2021, University of Ottawa had 46,897 students enrolled, including 39,226 undergraduate students and 7,671 graduate students. The university reports that 32,342 of its students studied in English and 14,555 students studied in French. It had 40,030 full-time students and 6,867 part-time students. University of Ottawa had 9,719 international students in F2021.

The university’s Faculty of Science has 26 research chair holders, including ten University Research Chairs, ten Tier 1 Canada Research Chairs, and six Tier 2 Canada Research Chairs. The Faculty of Science has 127 postdoctoral researchers and 162 researchers from the Association of Professors of the University of Ottawa. In F2021, it filed 14 patent applications and signed 117 contracts.

University of Ottawa is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada’s largest charities in terms of donations. In F2021, it received $28.8m in donations. The university also received $557.3m in government funding (46% of total revenue) and $473.5m in student fees (39% of total revenue) during the year. In F2021, it earned $156.3m in investment income (13% of total revenue), representing an 11% annual return. Its average annual investment return from F2019 to F2021 is around 7%. The annual average investment return of the S&P 500 from 2019 to 2021 is around 24%. The university’s portfolio is 3% composed of investments in hedge funds and 7% composed of investments in real estate and infrastructure.

Administrative costs are 5% of total revenue excluding investment income. Fundraising costs are 20% of donations. This results in total overhead spending of 25%. For every dollar donated to the charity, 75 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

University of Ottawa has $875.6m in net funding reserves ($1.5 billion in liquid assets less $661.9m in interest-bearing debts). Its liquid assets also include $298.0m in donor-endowed funds. University of Ottawa’s net funding reserves, excluding donor-endowed funds, can cover program costs for around eight months.

The charity used external fundraisers in F2019 according to its T3010 filing with the CRA. It reports paying external fundraisers $2k to raise $80k, at a cost of $0.02 per dollar raised. It did not report paying external fundraisers in F2021 or F2020.

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

Updated on August 10th, 2022 by Arjun Kapur.