The Giving 2022 Report

Generational Giving Trends

The Giving Gap Remains a Key Challenge Facing Canadian Charities

The “giving gap” is a trend whereby older Canadians are giving financially at twice the rate of younger Canadians, which indicates that charities will face a major shortfall in funding when older donors are no longer able to give. As highlighted in this year’s report, different generations of Canadians are choosing to engage with the causes they care about in different ways as younger donors feel more comfortable giving cryptocurrency, securities, or supporting causes through acts of protest or on social media. Younger Canadians have also exhibited more trust in charities than older generations and care strongly about causes like climate change and social justice issues.

In its fifth edition, The Giving Report 2022 highlights insights and generational giving trends facing Canada’s charitable sector which are taking place as charities are still struggling with demands and challenges from the ongoing pandemic, and now significant challenges brought about by historic inflation rates.

Leveraging the vast volume and breadth of online giving data at CanadaHelps, we’re able to paint a detailed picture about the state of online giving in Canada. In 2021, more than 968,000 Canadians gave more than $465 million to 31,700 charities. Since its start in 2000, more than 3.4 million Canadians have donated $2.1 billion to charities using CanadaHelps.

The report is produced in collaboration with Environics Analytics who provided demographic, financial, psychographic, and behavioural trends using CanadaHelps data. This report is also produced in collaboration with Imagine Canada who provided analysis and data verification of various data from Canada Revenue Agency.

Download the Report Here