Covenant Foundation is a 2-star charity with a below-average results reporting grade and overhead spending outside of Ci’s reasonable range. It is financially transparent. With its current reserves, the charity can cover 18 years of annual grants. 

In 1994, Edmonton General Hospital, Grey Nuns Hospital and Misericordia Hospital merged into one health group, the Caritas Health Group. At the same time, the independent hospital foundations serving each of the hospitals began operating together as the Caritas Foundation. In April 2016, the Foundation was renamed to Covenant Foundation (Covenant) and is now the fundraising arm for 21 healthcare facilities across Alberta. 

Covenant Foundation funds equipment, revitalizations of facilities, covid response programs, compassionate care and patient programs, research, and the Covenant Centres of Excellence.  Covenant granted $2.4m in F2022. This accounts for $252k in grants that were due from previous years. It granted 92% to Covenant Health, 7% to Covenant Care, and less than 1% to Covenant Living in F2022. 

Covenant Foundation is currently in a capital campaign to build a new Misericordia Emergency Department (ED). It notes that its current ED was built in 1969 to serve 25,00 patients annually, but now sees at least 50,000 people a year. The new ED will be triple the size of the old one and is expected to be open to the public in fall 2023. 

Covenant Foundation received $2.9m in donations in F2022. It also received $3.1m in investment income, which is 51% of total revenues. Administrative costs are 44% of revenues and fundraising costs are 19% of donations. This results in a total overhead spending of 62%. For every dollar donated, 38 cents go to the cause. This is outside of Charity Intelligence’s reasonable range for overhead spending. Covenant Foundation’s overhead spending has been outside of Ci’s reasonable range for the past three years. 

Covenant had reserve funds of $43.5m. Reserve funds are the charity’s cash and investments and include $9.6m in donor-endowed funds in F2022. Excluding donor-endowed funds, Covenant Foundation can cover annual program costs for 18 years. 

Covenant used external fundraisers in F2022. The charity spent $37k to raise $5.0m from the external fundraiser for a cost of 1 cent per dollar raised.  

Of the $40.9m Covenant Foundation holds in investments, 58% is invested in equities and 35% is invested in bonds. The return on investment in F2022 was 8% and the average return on investments over the past three years was 10%. 

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

Updated on August 1, 2023 by Alessandra Castino.