CharityData.ca

The CRA has released recently the 2019 version C of its T3010 Registered Charity Information Return.  The major changes deal with replacing political activities with "public policy dialogue and development activities" (PPDDAs).  As a result of Finance's 2018 changes CRA no longer asks for much information on "public policy dialogue and development activities".  CRA asks whether your charity did PPDDAs and give you a paragraph to describe the PPDDAs and how they relate to your purposes but don't ask how much you spent on them.   So when a billionaire's foundation spends $500 million on this type of political activity - you probably will not be able to easily detect it.  Remember we are all created equal - some are just more equal than others. In fairness to billionaires, it was not billionaires asking for this change - it was mainly a few progressive groups.  

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Blumbergs is pleased to announce that we will be hosting Blumbergs' Canadian Charity Law Boot Camp again on Monday April 20, 2020. An easy enough date to remember!   This is a one-day boot camp on compliance and standards issues for Canadian registered charities. You can find out more information and register for the program here. This Boot Camp will cover the differences between for-profits, non-profits and registered charities and why in some cases you may wish to have one or more of each to have maximum impact. It will focus on matters that are significant for any operating charity surrounding revenue generation rules, receipting, transparency, and protecting your charity against risks. Topical issues such as collaboration, foreign activities, political activities, the Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (CNCA) and Ontario Non-Profit Corporations Act (ONCA) will be touched upon as well.

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Join us on Monday October 7, 2019 in Toronto for the 8th Annual Blumbergs' Canadian Charity Law Institute. We will be featuring a number of speakers covering different legal and compliance issues affecting Canadian charities and non-profits.  It will be a full day packed with practical legal and ethical compliance information geared toward charities, professional advisors and those interested in regulatory issues affecting charities and the non-profit sector. Space is limited. Here is the agenda.  

The price is $275 for the day. It includes breakfast, lunch, breaks, coffee and drinks, HST and handouts. For more information (including the agenda) or to register here is a link to the Blumbergs' Canadian Charity Law Institute 2019.

Here is our article "Comparison of the CRA’s Charities Listing and Blumbergs’ CharityData.ca" which looks at the two main public and free sources of data on registered charities in Canada.

CRA has recently updated its Charities Listing and the most notable change is the fact that they have reduced the amount of information available on each Canadian registered charity. The Charities Listing used to have up to 15 years of data for each charity, but now that has been reduced to only the last 5 years of data for each charity. There are concerns that this change reduces transparency and accountability within the charitable sector. While the information is still technically publicly available, now anyone who would like to review older data must first submit a request form to CRA and wait a few weeks instead of that information being instantly available.

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Every year Canadian registered charities must file the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return with the Charities Directorate of CRA. In June 2019 Canadian registered charities will be able to file the T3010 online which will make the process easier and quicker. If charities do not file the form, they can be revoked by CRA for non-filing. If the T3010 is not filed accurately it can be cause for suspension of a charity's receipting privileges. On June 10, 2019 at 1pm, we will be hosting the Fundamentals of the T3010 and Transparency for Canadian charities, a 3-hour workshop on legal and practical issues relating to the T3010 filing and transparency for charities.  Register here. 

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The Federal Department of Finance has recently released its Report on Federal Tax Expenditures: Concepts, Estimates and Evaluations 2019.  For those interested in tax policy and tax incentives it always provides some interesting reading. 

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On March 15, 2019, CRA announced that there will be changes to the T3010 Annual Return and the T2050 Application to Register a Charity to account for the recent changes to the political activities rules for Canadian registered charities. Instead of reporting on their political activities, charities will report their public policy dialogue and development activities (PPDDAs). According to CRA, registered charities will have less to report for PPDDA than they previously reported for their political activities. The changes to the T3010 and T2050 are set to come in November 2019. Until the changes are made, CRA has provided instructions on how to fill out the current T3010 and T2050 for PPDDA. 

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The Blumbergs' Canadian Charity Law Boot Camp will be held again on Monday April 8, 2019. This is a one-day boot camp on compliance and standards issues for Canadian registered charities. You can register for the program here. 

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Global News journalist Stewart Bell recently wrote an article "Government revokes charity status of Canadian Jewish group that supported ‘foreign armed forces’".  The articles discusses the recent revocation of the Canadian registered charity Beth Oloth Charitable Organization.  You can see detailed information on Beth Oloth at www.CharityData.ca.  It is quite clear from this Charitydata webpage that this organization went from having very little revenue to spending in the last few years over $200 million and apparently spending over 193m outside of Canada.

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We are pleased to announce that we have recently updated our CharityData.ca website to include nearly all T3010 2017 data and some of the 2018 data.

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We have created a course entitled "Should We Establish a Canadian Social Enterprise, Non-Profit or Charity and How to Do It?".   The course is $149 and you can register at https://charity-law.teachable.com/   Here is an overview of the course:

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On Monday November 19, 2018 I presented to the Special Senate Committee on the Charity Sector in Ottawa.  My presentation dealt with a number of areas especially transparency of non-profits and registered charities, good charity regulation, and political activities by charities.

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Canadian registered charities must file their Registered Charity Information Return (Form T3010) on an annual basis within 6 months of their fiscal year end.  Generally, CRA will send the T3010 package (which includes the peel-off labels) to the Charity’s mailing address within a month of a Charity’s fiscal year end.  And if not yet filed, CRA will send a Reminder to file the T3010 to registered charities by regular mail after the initial T3010 package was sent. 

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The CBC today covered the issue of Canadian pro sports teams and their fundraising charities in "Pro sports charities hoarding cash, overspending on fundraising, watchdog says".   This is a follow on to the coverage by the Toronto Star from 2010. 

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We launched today at the Blumbergs' Charity Law Institute 2018 the Blumbergs Canadian Charity Sector Snapshot 2016.  It has some interesting statistics on the Canadian charitable sector from the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return filings.  

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Here is our article on How Much Should a Canadian Registered Charity Spend on Administration?

The CRA announced today that they are delaying the Charities IT Modernization Project (CHAMP) till June 2019. When CHAMP is launched, charities will no longer be able to make application by paper application and will have to use the CHAMP system. As well, although not required, charities will be able to file the T3010 under the CHAMP system.   Because all charity applications will need to go through CHAMP, it is ideal that it works seamlessly and if that means a delay of 6 or 7 months, I don't think many people will care.

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Here is a copy of our Submission to the Federal Finance Committee dated August 1, 2018 for the 2019 Federal Budget.  The submission covers transparency of non-profits and registered charities, as well as a number other recommendations to improve the regulation of registered charities.  

The Canadian charity and non-profit sector are an important part of the Canadian economy and have a huge impact on the lives of Canadians.   With the registered charity sector (approximately 86,000 organizations) the public has up-to-date and detailed information.  Unfortunately, with the 80-100,000 non-profits that are not registered charities (we don't even know how many there are) we have almost no information on the size and scope of that sector and there is little transparency on individual non-profits that are not registered charities. 

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The Department of Finance has released the 2018 Report on Federal Tax Expenditures.  The document is over 300 pages and discusses the financial costs of certain Canadian tax measures including donation tax incentives.  These costs are referred to as "tax expenditures".   On page 287 there is an extensive discussion of the tax assistance for publicly listed securities or marketable securities under the heading "Evaluation of the Non-Taxation of Capital Gains on Donations of Publicly Listed Securities". Anyone interested in the topic of donating appreciable marketable security to charities will find the discussion interesting.

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Here is an article I recently wrote entitled Top Canadian Charity Law Issues for Charity Village.  It highlights some of the top compliance issues that a Canadian charity should be concerned with.   

There are over 2.5m pages on the Government of Canada's website and only a few thousand deal with registered charities.   Here are some tips on finding information on registered charities.  However, keep in mind that information and legal advice are two very different matters - if the issue is important and involves potentially large consequences consider obtaining professional legal advice from a lawyer who is very knowledgeable about non-profits and charities and consequently probably spends most of their time practicing in the narrow confines of charity and non-profit law.  

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Understanding legal compliance for registered charities is not easy but Blumbergs is offering exciting new upcoming events in 2018 that will help.   

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As you probably know if you are interested in a Federal corporation (non-profit or otherwise) you can easily search the Corporations Canada website.  This gives you lots of information on Federal non-profit corporations including the name, Corporation Number, Status, which corporate legislation governs, their registered office address, names and addresses of directors, the minimum and maximum number of directors, the last filing date of a corporation, whether filings are overdue, the history of the corporate names, as well as what corporate documents have been filed like Articles, By-laws, Financial Statements etc.   You could always request copies of documents and Corporations Canada was quite efficient in returning them within a day or two.   However, now Corporations Canada has made it even easier for you by making many of the listed documents available instantly. 

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