Description

This Report presents an analysis of the efficiency of the Canadian Charitable and Philanthropic Sector in providing its goods and services to the public.

The analysis reflects data for charities that have filed financial reports to the Canada Revenue Agency for their financial year-end for each of the five years from 2016 to 2020. Excluded from the analysis are charities directly involved in the provision of Education and those with a Religious purpose.

Measures of efficiency give an indication of the financial cost to produce a specific level of output. The less the cost of production per unit of output, the more efficient is the process. Thus, for a given level of resource in-put, the more output will be attained.

For the Charitable Sector, measures of efficiency give insight into how much an organization, or collectively the Sector, can spend to deliver a social good relative to the amount of time, money and other resources needed to produce it.

We present an analysis of seven key measures of efficiency for the Charitable and Philanthropic Sector.  We also present an international comparison of Canada’s Charitable Sector to that of The United Kingdom, The United States, and Australia.