Donating to charities this year seems like a squeeze. Canadians face incredibly high expenses these days. It’s an affordability crisis, whether we’re talking housing, groceries or pretty much any other cost of living. The impact is severe.
In March 2024, Canadian food banks had more than 2 million visits, which Food Banks Canada reports is the highest number in food banks’ 43-year history in this country.
And who uses food banks has shifted, too. Food Banks Canada notes: “18% of food-bank clients are currently employed, the highest proportion ever recorded.” This isn’t surprising, given that real wages in Canada are below where they were pre-pandemic, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
And yet, despite the affordability issue in our country, Canadians can find the money to give to charities. Charity Intelligence (Ci) estimates that Canadians gave $19 billion last year. Of the charities that Ci analyses, which represent roughly half of the estimated $19 billion given, including most of the biggest charities in the country, overall donations and special event fundraising for the most recent year ending in either 2023 or 2024 are up 6.2% in the current year and were up 3.4% the prior year, says Ci’s director of research, Greg Thomson.
That says something about the generosity of Canadians, who give for many different reasons. It could be a cause that’s personal or even family or work related. But if you want to know which charities make the biggest differences, this ranking can help. And in these times when money is tight, guidance on where to send those precious funds can be extra helpful. To help donors effect the most change with the money Canadians are able to donate, MoneySense partners with Charity Intelligence (Ci) to learn more about Canadian charities and their impact.
If you want your donations to make a difference in your community or even the world, you’ve come to the right place. Check out our rankings of best charities for impact. We have four lists for you:
If you want your donations to make a difference in your community or even the world, you’ve come to the right place. Check out our rankings of best charities for impact. We have four lists for you:
Not all charities have equal impact.
And so Ci, itself a charity, does a deep dive into charities to help people make donation decisions. Its research analysts take a close look at how much change each charity makes with each dollar donated.
There are charities in Canada and beyond that can turn a single dollar into nearly $7 thanks to the benefits for both wider society and those they help directly. Think of a program that offers people a place to sleep for the night versus one that gives them a permanent home and provides support like mental health and harm reduction services. This kind of offering will reduce the health-care system’s costs, thanks to a reduction in hospital visits, so we all benefit.
On the flip side, some take a dollar donation and produce just $0.40 of change because of the impact they create and how they spend the money to make that change.
“If you give to a charity that creates very little value when you could have helped significantly more people with your donation, a good part of your donation was wasted,” says Thomson.
Consider charities that pay for kids to go to camp, he says. “Sending kids to camp is a wonderful thing, and it can create great memories and friendships, and I’m sure there are some lifelong benefits to it, but from the data that we’ve seen, it’s really hard for charities to demonstrate the benefit of spending five to $10,000 to send a kid to camp for a week in terms of how it changes the lives of kids,” he explains. “We would love to see more research on that, but until we do, it’s a cost that’s higher than it needs to be for what it provides.”
Find out which charities provide the greatest impact for your donation dollar based on a charity’s impact rating—a financial measurement of their on-the-ground work. Ci has released its top impact lists for eight years now (starting in 2017). It looks at Canadian charities using the “impact rating” to compare each.
Ci uses publicly available information—including financial statements, annual reports and websites—to rate charities in four areas:
That last one is about how much of each donated dollar goes to a charity’s programs after paying for administration, management and fundraising costs.
Ci began adding impact scores to some of its charity reports in 2018, and it currently includes this metric for about 275 of the 850 Canadian charities it researches.
Ci regularly refines the way it puts its lists together. For 2024, it removed any charities from the impact list that had more than three years’ worth of funding sitting on their balance sheet in investment accounts or cash. It calls this new data point “program cost coverage.”
The question Ci is asking is: Does it really need donations? “It seems like a funny question, because you think, well, ‘it’s a charity, of course, they need donations.’ And the majority of charities do need donations in the next year or they won’t be able to continue with their work,” says Thomson. “But there are charities that don’t really need donations, and for this year, we would recommend folks give elsewhere, because they’ve got a bunch of money sitting on their books.”
One of the charities that would have made their top impact food banks list was no longer eligible because of this new rule. “The typical food bank before the pandemic was operating hand-to-mouth; the money comes in, and it spends it. It might have a year of funding sitting on their books. But, not likely. And during the pandemic, a lot went up to two years and three years of funding,” he explains.
While in 2023, Ci removed from Top Impact List consideration any charity that rated zero in financial transparency. To get that zero, charities had to make it really hard for people to access their financial statements. In fact, the only way for Ci to get those figures was to request them from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) since the charities wouldn’t share directly with Ci, never mind posting them on the respective websites. In 2024, that meant three charities that would have otherwise been on a Ci impact list were taken out of the running, notes Thomson.
This year, Ci also tweaked its methodology for calculating impact to remove some of the variability to make the scores more consistent. (Again, please see the full methodology, which includes a more detailed explanation of this change.)
Sheltering the unhoused is a big issue facing Canadians since the pandemic first hit in 2020. Thankfully there are some charities doing good work to help this vulnerable population.
Thomson says the impact ratings Ci gives charities are reliable for donors so they can make informed decisions about where they donate and support. “It’s all about helping the most people get the most change from your donation dollar,” he explains.
the popular Habitat for Humanity charities have either “low” or “fair” ratings every year has a low impact rating every year because of the social return on a donation to the charities. “It’s one of the most expensive charitable programs we’ve seen anywhere.” Ci has rated eight Habitat for Humanity charities for impact, and its best estimate is that they create $0.50 to $2 per $1 donated.
Especially when compared with Against Malaria Foundation Canada—an arm of the U.K.-based Against Malaria Foundation—which is one of Ci’s Top 10 Impact Charities for 2024. Against Malaria Foundation Canada has a “high” impact rating. “Our best estimate is that the Against Malaria Foundation creates $17 from every $1 donated,” says Thomson.
Though Thomson does note that its overall rating would be lower if impact weren’t included, since according to Ci’s research, the foundation has an X score for financial transparency—Ci’s second-lowest rating in that category—because its financial statements are only available upon request.
If you think back to why you’ve given to charity, it’s likely you did so for a few different reasons. Maybe you wanted to support a health-care organization that helped a friend out, or you wanted to give to a youth sports program because being involved in sports taught you important lessons and skills, or you gave out of compassion. These personal reasons are key drivers when it comes to where people donate their money. But you may have also chosen to support a charity because of the way it approaches fundraising and philanthropy.
Thomson shares that one of the biggest reasons people give is because they were asked, either by a friend or the charity itself. Also, it feels really good to give, he says.
Another reason to donate? To make a difference, and that’s where Ci’s top impact lists can come in handy, says Thomson.
“Not every donor is going to give for impact, and even folks who say that they give for impact are still going to be compassionate about certain things that they care about. And so they should. That’s awesome,” Thomson notes. “Our lists are for that portion of your giving where you want to have an impact.”
You can also use the lists to find charities with big impact that help with a cause you’re passionate about. After you’ve narrowed down the cause you want to donate to, take a look at Ci’s 2024 Top 10 Impact Charities, which deliver average returns of $7 for every $1 donated, compared with the overall average return of $1.50. You can also look up your favourite charity by name (or search by sector) on charityintelligence.ca to see if it has been assessed for impact and, if so, what the impact rating is: “low,” “fair,” “average,” “good” or “high” Obviously, a better-than-average rating is what you’re after.
Ci assigns impact ratings of “low,” “fair,” “average,” “good” and “high” to about one-third of the charities it assesses. Impact is just one of five metrics Ci uses to rate charities. The other four are results reporting, financial transparency, need for funding and the impact value of the donations.
The impact rating currently accounts for 20% of a charity’s star rating score; however, additional rules based on the impact rating (e.g., a charity with fair impact can be no higher than a 3-star charity) make impact the most important metric in determining the overall star rating. Ci uses a demonstrated impact score to calculate a charity’s impact rating, as explained below.
This score measures social return on investment (SROI), or the amount of social good that charities generate per $1 donated. SROI is expressed as a ratio—say, $5 of returns for every $1 donated, as follows:
SROI = Total monetary value of a charity’s outcomes ÷ Charity’s annual spending
Annual spending is straightforward and easy to find, since it usually appears in a charity’s annual report and financial statements.
The data researchers first look at publicly available information and reach out to each charity to ask: What outcomes did you achieve this year?
For an organization that supports unhoused youth, for example, Ci would ask about the benefits youth received from the charity. Was it simply a place for them to sleep? Or did they also get a meal in the morning, plus counselling or referrals for support or care?
Ci then uses external research to assign a monetary value to those outcomes, both for the benefits to the charity’s clients as well as to society. In this case, it would add the intrinsic value of the housing, food, counselling and referrals (if applicable), as well as averted risk of death in the value column for the client. It would also incorporate reduced costs to public health care, shelters, food banks, and so on in the value column for society.
To quantify this data, Ci determines a best estimate for a charity based on whatever data the charity has available, filled in with somewhat conservative data that it could expect from an average, similar charity. It then does a risk adjustment based on any assumptions Ci had to make, creating a Risk-Adjusted SROI that is, in most cases, significantly lower than the best estimate.
For example, if a food bank has no data on the need levels of its clients, Ci would initially assume an average need profile for food banks in general and then do a risk adjustment on the overall SROI based on a very conservative assumption for the charity’s clients’ needs.
The final impact score is a combination of the best estimate and the risk-adjusted SROI scores.
This score measures the quantity and quality of impact-related information a charity gives to Ci. Analysts look at the amount that the risk-adjusted SROI is discounted from the best estimate to assess the level of confidence in the data available.
The demonstrated impact score and data quality score are then plotted on a graph to provide a total impact rating of “low,” “fair,” “average,” “good” or “high,” as demonstrated here:
By Alex Mlynek