Founded in 2000, CanadaHelps simplifies charitable giving by providing a central online platform to donate to charities. Its website helps donors send funds to charities of their choice and store donation receipts, while providing charities with fundraising platforms and donor management tools. CanadaHelps receives cash donations and donated securities on behalf of charities across Canada. To cover its costs, it distributes the funds for a processing fee of between 2% (security donations over $100k) and 4% (one-time donations).

In F2020, CanadaHelps gave out $280.1m in donations, with another $8.8m committed to charities but not yet disbursed at year end. Over the past 20 years, it states that it has distributed more than $1 billion.

CanadaHelps aims to help charities increase their effectiveness by streamlining the donation process and reducing overhead costs. For instance, it offers customizable donation forms, ticketed event pages, peer-to-peer fundraising, and monthly donation options. It also created several new online tools to help charities run fundraising campaigns in F2020. CanadaHelps launched its new Donor Management System (DMS) during the year, which generates reports on donor data and helps charities to track patterns in donations over time. In response to the covid-19 pandemic, it also produced eight webinars on topics relating to virtual fundraising and moving online. In total, 27,234 charities received donations through CanadaHelps in F2020, including 2,400 new charities joining its platform for the first time.

For donors, CanadaHelps aims to help Canadians donate with ease and engage more people in charitable giving. In response to data showing donations falling among young donors, CanadaHelps launched its Cause Funds initiative in November 2019. Cause Funds allow donors to give to many registered charities supporting a common cause at once. In F2020, it ran two covid-19 Cause Funds and a Black Solidarity Fund, helping 12,215 donors to support 682 charities. According to its research, CanadaHelps states that younger donors are likely to be socially conscious and more drawn to cause-based giving, finding that younger donors gave to the Black Solidarity Fund at more than double the typical rate of giving by young Canadians. It also states that Cause Funds help distribute funds to many smaller charities, which comprise 91% of charities in Canada but only receive 57% of donations.

CanadaHelps is a Major 100 charity, one of Canada's largest charities in terms of donations. It received $301.4m in donations in F2020, rising 58% from $190.4m in the year before. In F2020, CanadaHelps distributed $280.1m in donor-designated grants, compared to $182.2m in F2019.

CanadaHelps audited financial statements do not disclose activity-based costing. Charity Intelligence has used its information filed in its annual T3010 return for cost allocations. Administrative costs are less than 1% of revenues (less investment income) and fundraising costs as a percentage of donations are virtually zero. Nearly all dollars donated go to the cause. This is not within Ci's reasonable range for overhead spending between 65 and 95 cents. However, given the low-cost nature of this charity, this likely does not raise any concerns about understated overhead costs.

CanadaHelps has $2.5m in net funding reserves, which can cover 29% or less than four months of annual program costs.

Capital expenditures spiked at $2.5m in F2019 due to the purchase of a new office building for $1.9m, funded partly by long-term debt. CanadaHelps' audited financial statements fail to disclose interest costs. These are likely bundled in with credit card transaction costs and bank charges. 

Charity Intelligence has sent this update to CanadaHelps for review. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on June 15, 2021 by Eric Zhao.