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 and distributes the money received (less a fee) to the respective charity.  

In F2019, CanadaHelps facilitated $183 million in donations, taking its cumulative total to about $1.5 billion. CanadaHelps hopes to allow charities to increase effectiveness by streamlining the donation process. The charity reports that most Canadian charities are small and need support, given that 80% of charities make less than $500,000 in revenue a year. Through CanadaHelps, Canadians can donate to over 86,000 charities in Canada.

In F2019, more than 20,000 charities used CanadaHelps for their fundraising, up 27% from F2018. During the charity’s Great Canadian Giving Challenge, 109,258 people made donations (worth $14.3 million) to 12,033 charities.

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 received ranging from 2% (security donations over $100k) to 5.5% (peer-to-peer social fundraising).

CanadaHelps is a Major 100 charity, meaning it is one of Canada's largest charities in terms of donations. The charity received $190.4m in donations in F2019, compared with $157.7m in F2018. In F2019, CanadaHelps distributed $182.8m in donor-designated grants, an increase of 21% from F2018. Administrative costs are 0.4% of revenues 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, although given the nature of this charity, this does not raise any concerns. Factoring in debt, CanadaHelps has total funding reserves of ($68k). Excluding debt of $1.2m, the charity can cover 2.1 months of annual program costs.

Capital expenditures of $2.5m in F2019 primarily relate to the purchase of a new office building for $1.9m, funded partly by long-term debt. 

This charity report is an update that has been sent to CanadaHelps for review. Comments and edits may be forthcoming.

Updated on July 28, 2020 by Tenzin Shomar.