National Arts Centre Foundation is a 2-Star charity. It has reasonable overhead costs but is not financially transparent and has a below-average results reporting grade. Before you give, read Charity Intelligence's report. 

Founded in 2000, National Arts Centre Foundation (NACF) is the fundraising arm of National Arts Centre (NAC). The Foundation’s mission is to inspire Canadians to support the NAC’s priorities in performance, creation, and learning. It raises funds for supporting performing arts and education activities of NAC, and granted $7.9m to NAC in F2021. Based in Ottawa, NAC is the only bilingual, multidisciplinary performing arts centre in Canada. Its major programs are NAC Orchestra; English Theatre; French Theatre; Indigenous Theatre; Dance; Popular Music and Variety, and several other programs such as learning and engagement, major events, and festivals.

National Arts Centre Foundation outlines three major funding areas: Supporting Performance, Supporting Creation, and National Youth and Education Trust.

Supporting Performance grants focus on funding NAC’s performances in music, dance and theatre, both virtual and live on-stage. In F2021, NAC staged 72 artistic co-productions and co-commissions. It also offered 119 Indigenous Theatre performances and public programs. NAC’s online programs were viewed 3,270,716 times in F2021.

Supporting Creation grants give artists the opportunity to share their work through music, theatre, and dance with Canadians, promoting contemporary Canadian artistic voices on the national stage. This includes supporting the National Creation Fund. In F2021, the fund invested $2.8m into 18 projects.

National Youth Education Trust helps NAC fund education programs for young people across Canada through programs such as NAC Summer Music Institute and NAC Music Alive Program. In F2021, 6,888 students participated in online and onsite learning programs. Eight NAC Orchestra musicians and four professional musicians from the National Capital Region led more than 20 virtual Music Circle workshops for 130 elementary and secondary students from five Ottawa schools. NAC also held a virtual two-day BIG BANG festival for young people and families. The digital BIG BANG festival offered a variety of free online events about music and sound, including six live interactive events, 13 artistic projects, 17 performances and more than 45 artists. Nearly 8,000 people attended.

National Arts Centre Foundation received $6.9m in donations in F2021. Fundraising costs are 26% of donations and reported administrative costs are 1% of total revenues. This results in total overhead spending of 27%. For each dollar donated, 73 cents go to the cause. This is within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead costs.

NACF has $12.7m in funding reserves of which $4.1m is donor endowed. Excluding donor-endowed funds, the charity’s funding reserves can cover around 13 months of program costs at the F2021 level.

NACF paid external fundraisers $434k in F2021 to raise $403k for a cost of $1.08 per dollar raised.

This charity report is an update that is currently being reviewed by National Arts Centre Foundation. Comments and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 19 2022 by Emily Downing.