February 05, 2012

Being Good at Doing Good 2012 in Toronto - Feb 13 and 14 - you don’t want to miss this conference

There will be another Being Good at Doing Good conference on February 13 and 14, 2012 organized by the Charity Law Information Program - you don’t want to miss this conference.  We will have some of the top experts from Canada, the US and the UK on governance, financial management and compliance.  Here is the registration page: http://www.clipconference.wildapricot.org/  The conference is “Doing Good” at registrations with over 185 people signed up so far.

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Toronto Star article “ORNGE paid lawyers $11 million”

Posted by Mark Blumberg on 02/05 | comments (0) | permalink | forward to a friend
Published under: Canadian Charity Law

The Toronto Star has been doing a number of articles on a Canadian registered charity named “ORNGE” which provides air ambulance services in Ontario.  In this article Kevin Donovan, investigative reporter for the Toronto Star, is discussing amounts of legal fees paid by ORNGE and the services provided.

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Largest Gifts from Canadian Charities to other Qualified Donees - 2010

Posted by Mark Blumberg on 02/05 | comments (0) | permalink | forward to a friend
Published under: Canadian Charity Law | Canadian Charity Statistics

Here is a list of the Largest Gifts from Canadian Charities to other Qualified Donees - 2010.  You might find this interesting.

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February 03, 2012

CRA’s New Fundraising Guidance 2012

CRA will be shortly releasing their much anticipated revised Guidance on Fundraising.  Join charity lawyer Mark Blumberg as he presents a webinar on behalf of the Charity Law Information Program entitled “CRA’s New Fundraising Guidance” on Friday, February 10, 2012 at 1PM EST for approximately 1 hour.

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January 31, 2012

Blumbergs submission on the importance of transparency to the charity and non-profit sector

Here is a copy of my submission to the Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance on Motion 559 dealing with transparency. 

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January 30, 2012

Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law List - January 2012

Here is the Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law List - January 2012

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January 28, 2012

CRA letters to Canadian registered charities when revocation for cause

For a number of years CRA has been aggressively targeting charities that are involved with abusive tax shelter schemes or in serious non-compliance with their legal obligations under the Income Tax Act. In some cases CRA puts out a news release but that only provides a small amount of detail as to the concerns of the regulator.  Anyone can request from CRA copies of letters sent by the Charities Directorate to a charity which provide a lot more detailed information.  Here are copies of news releases and more importantly in some cases the letters from CRA to the charity.

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StatsCan stats on charity sector interesting - but notes even more interesting

Posted by Mark Blumberg on 01/28 | comments (0) | permalink | forward to a friend
Published under: Canadian Charity Statistics

StatsCan recently published some statistics on charitable giving.  They noted “Canadian taxfilers reported making charitable donations of just under $8.3 billion in 2010, up 6.5% from 2009. At the same time, the number of donors increased 2.2% to just over 5.7 million. Data are based on income tax returns filed for 2010.”  That is a bit of a good news story and shows that many Canadians who have jobs feels quite lucky and are generally digging into their pockets more.  What is interesting and not discussed by StatsCan is that Canadian charities according to their T3010 filings issued about $13 billion in donation receipts.  Why then almost a 5 billion dollars difference between the T3010 filings and the personal income tax returns?  Many Canadians gave under $200 and did not claim any amount on their return. Some donations came from corporations and not personal taxfilers.  Also maybe some who gave over $200 did not keep their receipts or did not think it was important to file them. Perhaps the tax benefits of donating to registered charities are less important to some than to others.

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January 27, 2012

Canadian Charities and Free Transparency Tools - look before you donate your time or money

There are a couple of interesting websites which allow much easier searching of information from the T3010 databases.  One is CharityFocus.ca (discussed at http://www.globalphilanthropy.ca/index.php/blog/comments/charity_focus_from_imagine_canada_-_a_helpful_tool_to_analyze_canadian_char/ ).  Another interesting website is http://www.opencharity.ca  Opencharity.ca allows for visitors to search not only by charity name but also directors name. 

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January 26, 2012

Alice Holt from Charity Commission of England and Wales will be speaking in Toronto in February

Alice Holt, the Head of Legal Services for the London office of the Charity Commission of England and Wales will be speaking at CLIP “Being Good at Doing Good” Conference in Toronto, which is being held February 13 and 14.  We are delighted to have Alice join us.

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