Canadian charities giving to Indigenous Charities and Qualified Donees - 2019

In our article last year, we discussed Canadian charities giving to Indigenous Charities and Qualified Donees – 2018.

Now Sharon Redsky, Wanda Brascoupe, Mark Blumberg and Jessie Lang have reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2019 in our article Canadian charities giving to Indigenous Charities and Qualified Donees – 2019 to see how many gifts and the value of those gifts were made from Canadian registered charities to “Indigenous Charities” and certain Qualified Donees such as First Nation Governments or ‘Bands’ (listed as “municipal or public body performing a function of government in Canada”). Together we refer to them as “Indigenous Groups”.  We have indicated the 2018 numbers in brackets below.

It appears that in 2019 there were 376 (284) grants to Indigenous Groups out of 29,045 (28,164) that were over $30,000.   So just under 1.3% (just over 1%) of grants were to Indigenous Groups.   There were 9 (7) gifts of $1 million and over to Indigenous groups.  156 (117) gifts over $100,000 in total. The total amount given by Canadian charities (including charitable organizations, public foundations and private foundations) to Indigenous Groups was $60,568,555. ($46,887,535).

In 2019 Canadian charities gave to other charities and qualified donees $9,657,526,922 ($9,400,321,633) which is slightly over $9.6 billion ($9.4 billion).   Of the total grants over $30,000 given by registered charities they were $8,409,716,653 ($8,350,587,042) in value which is about 87% of the dollars involved.

How much does the $60,568,555 ($46,887,535) equate to as a percentage of the $8.4 billion ($8.3 billion)?  As a percentage, Indigenous groups received 0.0072022114 (0.005614879%). This is about .7 percent (one-half a percent) of the funds granted.

Even though Indigenous people are about 4.9% of the population, Indigenous Groups received just over .7 percent (one-half a percent) of gifted funds.  As Indigenous people account for 4.9% of the Canadian population, then Indigenous groups are receiving about 1/7th (1/10th) of the funding that they would receive as a result of population size, even if one ignores issues of need.  Indigenous Groups are getting about $1 for every $138 ($178) given to non-Indigenous groups.

This reflects a similar finding in a recent report released in December 2020, ‘The Charity Report reveals where private foundations spend their money’, that reviewed the funding of 20 private foundations that gave a total of $1.63 billion in grants, in which 0.2% of funding went to support Indigenous organizations.

Just to put these total numbers in context, there are 9 (11) non-Indigenous charities that each received more than all the Indigenous Groups in Canada combined in 2019.  As well, Brigham Young University, a foreign registered university and therefore a qualified donee received about $76 million ($73 million) in that same year from Canadian charities.  So, one foreign university received more funds from Canadian charities than all Indigenous Groups in Canada.

As the data demonstrates, there has been little improvement in charitable grants to Indigenous Groups in 2019 compared to the previous 2018 data. While there is a growing awareness of how wealth has been accumulated in Canada through the dispossession of land, agriculture production, and the extraction of natural resources, much more needs to be done to foster equity and reconciliation.

For those who wish to make a donation to Indigenous Groups, one option is to use the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Fund by CanadaHelps developed by Wanda Brascoupe.   The Fund includes  57 Indigenous Groups, and your money will be allocated by CanadaHelps amongst those groups.  Over  $1 million has been raised by CanadaHelps in that fund so far.

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