Description

This report presents an analysis into the preliminary results of the global COVID health pandemic on the Canadian Charitable Sector.

The analysis reflects data on 29,860 charities that had filed financial reports to the Canada Revenue Agency for their financial period ended in 2019 and 2020 as at May 31st, 2021. Excluded from the analysis are charities directly involved in the provision of Education and those with a Religious purpose.

While our analysis excludes charities that were still to file their 2020 financial report (charities have six months from their year-end to file), our universe includes approximately 62 per cent of eligible charities. We believe this is a good representative sample to draw valid preliminary conclusions.

We compare 2019 financial results with 2020 results to unveil the changes in principle Balance Sheet and Income Statement items of the charities. We initially look at all charities. We then break down the analysis by different year end periods to examine the magnitude of the impact as the COVID crisis lengthened—charities with a later calendar year-end will have had a longer exposure to the crisis. We also look separately at small charities (those with Total Revenues of less than $1 million) to see if there is a discernibly different impact on them. We then choose a representative Charity Category—Alleviating Poverty—to see if the overall results are consistent with an individual Category.