How to Choose a Charity To Support
Benefaction is cause neutral and our donors can make their own grant recommendations to support their charitable choices. That said, we do have our own Director’s and Philanthropy Fund that is funded by any charitable fees earned in excess of expenses. The Fund is split 50/50 between grants at the discretion of our individual Directors and grants to organizations which share our mandate to grow strategic charitable giving in Canada.
We have found that our donors will often focus their grants on a few specific areas or causes like healthcare, welfare, religion, or community benefit. Some donors choose to direct their grants within their own community while others prefer to support organizations that work across the country or beyond. We understand that choosing which organizations to support can be a complicated, overwhelming process so we’ve gathered a few resources to help navigate this decision!
We recommend starting with your personal and philanthropic values. Here are a couple of questions to consider:
What are your top 3 values and why are they important to you?
Hint: Ask yourself, “What are the top 3 experiences that have impacted me most in my lifetime?” What values do you associate with these experiences?
Hint: You may want to begin by exploring what you learned from your parents and grandparents. What positive values express those teachings?
What hopes do you have for your family and/or society in general in terms of charitable giving?
The next step is to identify the broad areas or causes you would like to support. Here are some questions to consider:
1. What problem(s) are you looking to address and what is the cause(s) of the problem(s)?
2. What are the causes you care most about?
3. What is the right location for you? Do you want to partner with a charity that has a national or international scope? Or do you prefer to focus on your local community or region?
4. Do you prefer to work with well-established charities, or more grass-roots organizations?
5. What impact do you hope to achieve?
Once you have narrowed in on your areas of interest, you can shift your focus to identifying and researching specific organizations that are aligned with your charitable objectives.
It is important to keep in mind that Benefaction donors are only able to grant to organizations that are recognized as charities or other qualified donees by the Canada Revenue Agency. Due to the stringent definition of ‘charity’ in Canadian common law, many non-profits are not eligible to accept grants from charitable organizations. We recommend using the charity’s listing search on CRA’s website, which contains basic details about the charity and a CRA Registration Number.
Once the CRA registration is confirmed, donors can perform additional screening to decide if they want to support the charity in question. We have prepared a Charity Assessment checklist that donors and advisors can use to guide their review process for a particular organization. Most importantly, we recommend that you reach out to the charity you are considering supporting to ask them directly any questions you may have. They will be more than happy to provide you with information to get to know their work better.
Benefaction can help donors to undertake an assessment of a specific charity or identify ones that exclusively target the donor’s top causes. Contact Us if this service is of interest.