A presentation about transparency in the Canadian charitable sector delivered at the Charity Legal Information Program Conference Being Good at Doing Good in February 2012.

1. TRANSPARENCY IN
THE CANADIAN
CHARITABLE
SECTOR

2. TRANS·PAR·ENT
Adj.
Allowing light to
pass through
so that objects
behind can be
distinctly seen.

3. THE MEDIA’S
TAKE ON
TRANSPARENCY

5. WHAT I’M GOING TO
COVER
• An overview of free third-party transparency tools for
charitable organizations
• An overview of Imagine Canada’s new CharityFocus tool
and what unique transparency resources it offers
• An overview of the challenges (and solutions!) of using
financial data in transparency-related tools
• The future of transparency
• Feel free to ask questions at any point!

6. ABOUT ME
• President, Common Good Strategies
• Previously, Senior Research Associate at Imagine Canada
• Designed CharityFocus.ca
• Designed T3010QuickPrep.ca
• Many reports on the T3010
• 1000s of hours working on T3010 and financial
statements!
Any opinions expressed are solely my own.

7. DOES TRANSPARENCY HURT
CHARITABLE DONATIONS?

8. “Satisfied customers tell three
friends, angry customers tell 3000”
Pete Blackshaw

9. % OF TAX FILERS CLAIMING
DONATIONS ON TAX RETURNS
50.0%
40.0%
30.0% 29.4%
23.4%
20.0%
10.0%
0.0%
1993
1997
2001
2005
2009
1991
1992
1994
1995
1996
1998
1999
2000
2002
2003
2004
2006
2007
2008
2010
Source: http://www.imaginecanada.ca/files/www/en/researchbulletins/rb1501en.pdf

10. DONATION RATE TO
CHARITIES, BY HOUSEHOLDS
70%
62%
60%
50% 55%
40% 38%
30% 29%
20%
10%
0%
Rate of giving to religious charities
Rate of giving to non-religious charities
Source: Analysis from Survey of Household Spending

11. LEVEL OF TRUST IN
CHARITIES, 2000 TO 2008
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2000 2004 2006 2008
A lot of trust Some trust

12. TOTAL DONATIONS TO CHARITIES
FROM INDIVIDUAL TAX RETURNS
(IN $1000S)
$9,000,000
$8,000,000
$7,000,000
$6,000,000
$5,000,000
$4,000,000
$3,000,000
$2,000,000
$1,000,000
$-
Source: http://www.imaginecanada.ca/files/www/en/researchbulletins/rb1501en.pdf

13. • Lack of transparency can definitely hurt an individual charity
• One of the strongest predictors of donations to a particular
charity is trust in that charity
• Most people do not use financial information, even if its
available
• Of those that do, most use it as a “heuristic”
• Is it there or not?
• The challenge is that people also use heuristics to judge the
charity
• The media definitely will use this information
• It’s always better to have bad news come from your own
organization

14. According to the Muttart Foundation’s Talking About
Charities Survey:
• 49% of donors want more information about the work
charities do
• 62% strongly agree that more attention should be paid to
the work that charities do

15. Source: Muttart Foundation’s Talking About Charities Report: 2008

16. TRANSPARENCY
INTERMEDIARIES
IN CANADA

18. CHARITY RATINGS

19. MONEYSENSE
CHARITY 100

20. CHARITY INTELLIGENCE

21. TOP PICKS
http://www.charityintelligence.ca/images/to
ppicks/ci_top_picks_2011.pdf

25. CHARITY MATCHING

28. A NEW TRANSPARENCY
TOOL FOR CHARITIES

29. Provided by

30. “CharityFocus is a powerful and user-friendly,
fully bilingual resource for the Canadian public,
which provides
comprehensive financial information about all
Canadian charities. The site draws from
organizations' T3010 filings to the CRA but
also provides charities with an opportunity to
upload their own material to provide context
and meaning to the numbers.”
- Stephen Faul, Vice President Strategic Communications and
Business Development

49. WHAT NEXT?
• More structured details on volunteers?
• More structured details on impact?
• More APIs for social media as new sites become popular

50. HOW TO USE
CHARITYFOCUS
• Step 1. Make absolutely sure your current T3010 is
accurate and fully complete
• Make sure you have charitable programs, fundraising
expenditures, etc. on the form
• Check your math
• Check for keying (that’s not a typo) areas that may have
been introduced by CRA
• Step 2. Ensure that key information is accurate going back
for all years available (Revenue, Expenditures, Charitable
Expenditures, Qualified Donees)
• Step 3. Check all years available and ensure the
information is accurate
• Step 4. Make sure all future submissions are accurate.

51. HOW TO GET MORE
FROM CHARITYFOCUS
• Upload your annual report
• Upload your financial statements
• Upload your social media channels
• Upload your brochures
• Upload impact statements and evaluations you’d like to
share with the public!
• Upload your own RSS news stream
• TELL YOUR STORY.

52. THE PROBLEMS WITH
T3010 INFORMATION

53. ERRORS ON THE
T3010 (2007)
Annual revenue With 1 error on With 3 or more
the T3010 errors
Less than $30,000 42% 16%
$30,000 to $99,999 35% 9%
$100,000 to $249,999 29% 6%
$250,000 to $499,999 25% 5%
$500,000 to $999,999 22% 4%
$1,000,000 to $9,999,999 22% 4%
$10,000,000 or more 23% 5%
http://www.muttart.org/sites/default/files/report/PerspectivesOnFundraising-FINAL.pdf

54. My favourite error:
$5.7 billion dollars in tax-
receipted donations from one
organization

55. $205 million dollars
Source:
http://fotos.eluniversal.com.mx/coleccion/muestra_fotogaleria.html?idgal=3405

56. Approximately $5.7 billion dollars

57. UNDERESTIMATING REVENUE BY
$1.5 BILLION

58. OTHER ERRORS
• In 2007...
• 84% of organizations report dollars received
from tax-receipted gifts or fundraising
revenues.
• 58% completed the checklist on the T3010
which identifies which type of fundraising
methods they use.
• 27% of charities reported any amount
greater than $0 for fundraising
expenditures.

59. OUR SOLUTION FOR
THE PROBLEM

60. T3010 QUICKPREP
• www.quickprep.ca
• This tool was created with the support of Canada Revenue
Agency!

67. LIMITATIONS OF THE TOOL
• Only errors that can be found by a computer
• Though over 150 business rules built into the system
• It’s an online only application
• It does require basic technological skills

68. THE FUTURE OF THE
QUICKPREP
• We hope to continue to improve it based on feedback from
users, charities, and the general public!
• From reactive to proactive

69. ANOTHER COOL SITE

70. SEARCH FOR
DIRECTORS

72. the future of
transparency

73. MOBILE ACCESS

74. MOBILE
• 7% of our traffic is from a mobile
device
• Almost ½ of mobile traffic is now
from an Ipad
• Almost 1/3 of mobile traffic is from
an Iphone
• Average time on site: 46 seconds

75. WEB SEARCHES
3
4
Average time on site: 58 seconds

77. MORE INFORMATION
ON NONPROFITS
• Almost no information on these organizations!

78. OTHER KEY TRENDS
• More expectations
• More charities, larger charities
• (Mo’ money, mo’ problems)
• More ratings
• More automatic processing of your data
• Spiders, automatic processing of your website
• Social media
• Blogs

79. ADDITIONS I’D LIKE
TO SEE TO THE T3010
• More awareness of public usage of Charity data
• Notes to the financial statements
• More information on volunteers
• More sections for charities to provide context and impact
to their filings
• More details on technology expenditures
• Online filing
• Tiered forms

80. BECOMING MORE TRANSPARENT
Transparent concrete

81. QUICK CHANGES FOR
YOUR WEBSITE
• Upload your annual reports on your website
• Upload your audited financial statements
• Decide whether you might want to link to your T3010
• Upload impact statements, key metrics, and evaluations
that can show how well you’ve done!
• Make it easy to find!

82. BIGGER
CONSIDERATIONS IN
TRANSPARENCY
• According to your annual reports and financial statements,
did nothing bad happen last year?
• Is this decision the sort of things my staff are going to
complain about when they’re drunk after work?
• Do reporting frameworks make sense for our organization?
• Do we want to highlight our transparency by joining
Standards of Accreditation organizations?
• How can we explain to our stakeholders how our decisions
are made?
• How can people contribute to the decision making?
• Should we upload all of our policies relating to conflict of
interest, ethics, whistleblowing, ethics, etc.?

83. THANK YOU!
STEVE@GOODSTRATEGY.CA