The CRA released today their Report on the Charities Program 2016 to 2018.  They note: “We made the report shorter by reducing the amount of text and added more visuals. The report is now easier to understand and has a more modern look.”  There is far less information in this report than previously provided which is unfortunate.   Although with all the crazy changes Finance is coming up with on political activities I am surprised that CRA had the time to prepare this report at all. 

Here are some of the items that I thought were interesting from the report:

Here is a chart with revenues and expenditures over the last 25 years.  It shows a huge increase in the revenue and expenditures of the registered charity sector.   

The information on this page focuses on data collected over a 25 year period beginning in 1990, the earliest year for which a complete set of figures is available. Revenue and expenditures are as reported by charities on their T3010 annual returns and have been adjusted for inflation as of 2015.

Over 25 years, the total revenue and total expenditures of the charitable sector increased steadily.

Bar chart – Total revenue and expenditures of charities (in billion dollars)
Year      Revenue    Expenditures
1990     60.8            57.2
1991     66.3            63.2
1992     73.0            70.6
1993     84.4            80.0
1994     87.6            83.8
1995     91.7            87.7
1996    106.0         104.8
1997    104.6           99.4
1998    114.1          105.1
1999    139.4          123.2
2000    132.3          127.9
2001    138.0          134.1
2002    146.3         152.8
2003    158.4         164.4
2004    168.0         163.4
2005    178.5         167.4
2006    190.4         177.4
2007    199.2         185.2
2008    201.2         195.7
2009    212.4         206.2
2010    226.0         209.4
2011    226.1         219.1
2012    235.3         229.4
2013    245.2         233.4
2014    248.7         237.9
2015    251.1         240.1

Charitable applications received were down from 2016/2017 compared to 2017/2018 and so were successful charitable registrations.

Telephone inquiries were down by about 8000 from 2016/2017 compared to 2017/2018.  Maybe with the reduction in phone booths across the country and the ability to call on a truly anonymous basis the number of calls to CRA has declined!  

It is interesting that 5,165 charities requested adjustments to their T3010s which is far more than I would have thought but it shows that charities are starting to realize that it is vital to accurately file the T3010. Consequences for the inaccurate filing of the T3010 include suspension of receipting privileges amongst other outcomes.    

Here is a link to the Report on the Charities Program 2016 to 2018 (HTML) and the PDF version