WoodGreen Community Services

About WoodGreen Community Services:

Founded in 1937, WoodGreen Community Services (WCS) is a social service charity operating in Toronto. WCS breaks out its services into six major buckets: child and youth, seniors, employment, health and wellness, housing, and immigrant settlement. WCS has 36 locations in Toronto that cumulatively serve 37,000 people annually. WCS reports that it houses 1,000 people across its 11 housing sites, helps 7,000 people looking for jobs through its 3 Employment Resource centres, and helps 8,000 immigrants with the language, job and housing transition in Canada.

WoodGreen Community Services’ Homeward Bound program helps single mothers in unstable living situations get back on their feet. Through Homeward Bound, mothers can access affordable housing, free childcare and receive two years of free college education so that they can move from poverty into independent, sustainable living. Since the program started in 2004, Homeward Bound has housed 189 women and 299 children. In 2013, Boston Consulting Group evaluated Homeward Bound and determined that the program produces $4.00 of economic benefit for every dollar invested. This is due to improved health outcomes, reduced social assistance payments and increased tax revenues.

As part of its health and wellness services, WoodGreen Community Services runs the WoodGreen Walk-In Counselling Service for people struggling with issues such as depression, anxiety, stress and drug use. Since the program started in November 2010, WCS reports that it has held 1,723 sessions that helped 1,790 people, of which 878 were new clients to WCS.

First Step to Home is a health and housing program for elderly men who do not have stable housing. WoodGreen Community Services helps these men through affordable housing options and additional support services related to drug use, medical care, life skill development and weekly cleaning. WCS reports that 80% of the people helped through this program have maintained their new housing and health 5 years later.

Financial Review:

The following financial review represents the consolidated financial position of WoodGreen Community Services and WoodGreen Foundation (WF). WF is a separate registered charity that raises funds for WCS’s services. Ci did not include fund transfers between WCS and WF in the financial analysis.

WoodGreen Community Services is a medium-sized charity with total donations and special events fundraising of $2.7m in F2015. WCS operations rely heavily on the government – government funding of $25.6m in F2015 accounts for 66% of total revenues. Administrative costs are 9% of revenues and fundraising costs are 12% of donations. $0.21 of every donated dollar goes toward overhead costs, which falls within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending.

WCS holds funding reserves of $5.4m, which can cover only 16% of annual program costs.

This charity report is an update that is currently being reviewed by WoodGreen Community Services. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on August 3, 2016 by Katie Khodawandi.