Charitable Giving Report from Canada Helps
Jewish Family Services of Vancouver Island is immensely grateful for the donations we have received so far this year. From the Cobs bread fundraiser in March and April plus a very generous private donation, we are able to continue some of our programs. We hope to be awarded several grants that we have applied for and we always appreciate your donations to make sure that no one in our community goes hungry or is without support. Below is a short version of the article on the state of online giving in Canada, by Canada Helps. This not for profit company is used by thousands of charities, including Jewish Family Services of Vancouver Island.
Drawing on the vast number of donations processed by CanadaHelps, the Online Giving Index (OGI) provides insights into donations that are representative of online giving in Canada as a whole. In 2022, 963,000 Canadians, representing 3.1% of Canada’s adult population, donated $439 million dollars to more than 30,455 charities through CanadaHelps.
With tax filer data from the Canada Revenue Agency lagging two years, the CanadaHelps OGI is a leading indicator of the current health of giving in Canada. Meaning, if we see a directional change in the growth of online giving, we can expect a parallel change in the growth rate of overall giving.
We see that the rising cost of living and economic uncertainty had a direct correlation with online giving.
The result? Online giving through CanadaHelps grew by 2% in 2021 over 2020 and 4% in 2022 over 2021.
4% may sound like good news, but is significantly below the 22.4% average rate of growth each year between 2010 to 2020.
The picture is more concerning when we look at overall giving. With total giving data now available for 2020 (year one of the pandemic), we can see growth was in line with the average annual growth rate of 2.5% from 2010 to 2020. This means that the massive spike in giving online was a shift in how Canadians gave rather than an outpouring of incremental donations. Of further concern, we forecast that once data becomes available from the CRA, we will see a lower overall giving growth rate
of 1.2% in 2021-2022, with strong growth in Gross Domestic Product (which has a positive correlation to giving) during that time, guarding against a more severe decline
We provide stats on the state of the charitable sector and discuss that an alarming 57% of charities are already unable to meet current levels of demand for service. Clearly, single digit growth in charitable giving is insufficient to fill critical gaps in our communities and uphold our safety net.