Founded in 2000, CanadaHelps simplifies donations to charities by providing an online platform to donate through. CanadaHelps’ services include donation processing and disbursements, and fundraising platforms for charities. CanadaHelps receives donations on behalf of charities across Canada. CanadaHelps distributes the money received (less a fee) to the charity that it was intended for and provides the donor with a tax receipt.  

In F2018, CanadaHelps facilitated $151m in donations, taking its cumulative total since it started to over one billion dollars. CanadaHelps hopes to allow charities to increase effectiveness by streamlining the donation process. The charity reports that charities with under 10 staff rely much more heavily on donations than large charities and on average, donations make up 57% of revenues. In contrast, large charities (over 200 staff), donations only make up 12% of total revenues.

Through CanadaHelps, Canadians can donate to any one of the over 86,000 charities in Canada. CanadaHelps states that over 19,000 of these charities are dependent on its fundraising services. In F2018, 1,400 more charities partnered with CanadaHelps for fundraising needs. CanadaHelps collected donations from 89,899 different people in 2018, a 16% increase from 2017. 

CanadaHelps provides a variety of services to charities which include customizable donation forms, ticketed event management, peer-to-peer social fundraising, security donations (stocks), one-time donations, and monthly donations. To cover its costs, CanadaHelps collects a portion of donations/revenue received ranging from 2% (security donations over $100k) to 4.9% (peer-to-peer social fundraising) with the average being 3.7%.

CanadaHelps is one of Canada’s largest charities in terms of donations, a Major 100, with donations of $157.7m in F2018. This is a 14% increase from F2017. In F2018, CanadaHelps distributed $151.3m in donor-designated grants. The charity’s fundraising and administrative costs are equal to 4.1% of revenues in F2018. For every dollar donated, $.96 go to its grants. This is lower than Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending, although given the nature of this charity, this does not raise any concerns.  CanadaHelps has funding reserves of $1.4m. This can cover two and a half months of fundraising and administrative expenses at the F2018 level. 

This is a profile update that has been sent to CanadaHelps for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 11, 2019 by Stefan Tetzlaff.