Founded in 1982, Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada (BTFC) funds programs and services to support and educate people with brain tumours and gives money to researchers studying potential cures and improved treatments for this disease. BTFC states that 27 Canadians are diagnosed with brain tumours every day. It estimates that 55,000 Canadians have brain tumours, with over 120 different types of brain tumour diagnosed.

In 2017, Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada spent 79% of program costs on patient support and education and 21% on research. In 2016, it held 230 support group meetings, distributed 4,475 brain tumour handbooks, had 6,498 downloads of information from its website, granted post-secondary scholarships to 5 childhood brain tumour survivors and held 11 BrainWAVE fun and respite events for pediatric brain tumour patients and their families. BTFC’s Research Grant Program funds research relating to developing new concepts, clinical trials and other patient-oriented research, or pre-clinical research evaluating the therapeutic potential of recent discoveries. In 2017, the charity made 5 research grants. BTFC reports that it is providing $10,000 split over two summers to three research students studying brain tumours in 2018 and 2019.

Results and Impact: Dr. Alain, a 2017 grant recipient, and his team discovered a kinase inhibitor not previously known to increase viral infection. Understanding the process of the inhibitor can potentially help in the development of HSV1-based anti-cancer therapeutics. In 2017, another researcher supported by BTFC identified 12 subtypes of medulloblastoma and discovered that each subtype changes completely at the time of recurrence.

Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada is a medium-sized charity as it received donations and special event revenue of $3.5m in 2017. Administrative costs are 7% of revenues and fundraising costs are 16% of donations. The fundraising cost ratio has consistently declined from 26% in 2014. For every dollar donated, 77 cents go to the cause, falling within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending. BTFC has funding reserves of $2.9m that can cover program costs for 1.3 years. Excluding donor-endowed funds, funding reserves can cover program costs for 1.1 years.

BTFC used external fundraisers in 2015. The charity paid $10k to raise $13k from the external fundraiser for a cost of 83 cents per dollar raised, much higher than a cost of 10 cents per dollar raised in 2014. The charity did not report the use of external fundraisers in 2016, and 2017 information was not available at the time this report was written.

Spending on capital assets was $122k in 2017, significantly higher than $2k in 2016 due to $82k of new assets under capital lease.

This charity report is an update that has been sent to Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on August 3, 2018 by Joeyanne Cheung.