Minerva Blog

My thoughts on Charities paid $762M to private fundraisers

Today, CBC released its findings in their investigation into your charity dollars. Their findings say that between 2004 and 2008, Canadian registered charities paid $762 million to private fundraisers. The Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) recommends that charities spend no more than 35 per cent of their revenue on fundraising costs.

What this article fails to do is mention who or at least what types of fundraisers are being used. As a member of this community, I would want to know the names of the companies and if they are members of Imagine Canada or Association of Fundraising Professionals and how they compensate their fundraisers. If the companies are members of either of the above, then they take must abide by guidelines include compensation.

This article also fails to discuss the benefits these fundraisers have had on the organization. Did the fundraisers raise billions of dollars? How many new donors did they attract? Are those donors from 2004 still giving today? If so, the donations have doubled in value. Is the charity more known in the community? Non tangible benefits are extremely important especially for small, unknown charities.

I hope that some of Canada’s charities speak out against this article. I find this investigation to be one sided. What happened to journalism being unbiased?

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