View the most up-to-date Charity 100 rankings here.
We developed a transparent rating system that assigns letter grades to the 100 largest charities in Canada. Each charity is evaluated across four core areas—program spending efficiency, fundraising efficiency, governance (including transparency), and reserve fund size—and then ranked relative to other charities in the same category.
Charity categories and data sources
To ensure fair comparisons, charities were grouped into eight categories: Environment, Fundraising Organizations, Health/Health Services, Hospital Foundations, International Aid & Development, Religion, Social Services and Other. Fundraising organizations were defined as groups that direct more than 60% of expenses to other charities or that spend under 10% on programs.
Financial data for the rankings were taken from charities’ Canada Revenue Agency T3010 information returns for 2009, 2010 and 2011. The list focuses on the largest Canadian charities by revenue from tax-receipted donations and non-tax-receipted fundraising. Donations and fundraising revenues were used as the measure of revenue; gifts in kind were excluded when sorting by size. Certain organizations not generally regarded as charities—such as churches and universities—were excluded from the list.
Scoring overview
Each charity can earn up to 35 points, plus a possible 1-point transparency bonus (30 points plus bonus for community foundations). Those totals are converted to percentages, then normalized within each charity category so letter grades reflect relative performance among peers. The point breakdown is:
- Up to 10 points for overall charity efficiency (program spending)
- Up to 10 points for fundraising efficiency
- Up to 10 points for governance, plus 1 bonus point for salary disclosure
- Up to 5 points for reserves (not applied to community foundations)
Charity Efficiency (maximum 10 points)
We calculate charity efficiency by adding money spent on charitable programs and donations to other charities, then dividing that sum by total expenses.
Points are awarded based on the resulting percentage, with different thresholds for regular charities versus fundraising organizations and hospital foundations.
Regular charities
- 10 points for 85%–100%
- 7.5 points for 75%–85%
- 5 points for 65%–75%
- 2.5 points for 60%–65%
- 0 points for less than 60%
Fundraising organizations and hospital foundations
- 10 points for 90%–100%
- 7.5 points for 80%–90%
- 5 points for 75%–80%
- 2.5 points for 70%–75%
- 0 points for less than 70%
Scores within this category are then normalized by charity type so each charity is graded against peers in the same category.
Fundraising Efficiency (maximum 10 points)
Fundraising efficiency is calculated by dividing fundraising costs by the total fundraising revenue (tax-receipted and non-tax-receipted donations plus fundraising proceeds).
Point thresholds differ by charity type:
Regular charities
- 10 points for $0–$10 fundraising cost per dollar raised
- 7.5 points for $10–$20
- 5 points for $20–$30
- 2.5 points for $30–$35
- 0 points for more than $35
Fundraising organizations and hospital foundations
- 10 points for $0–$5 fundraising cost per dollar raised
- 7.5 points for $5–$10
- 5 points for $10–$20
- 2.5 points for $20–$30
- 0 points for more than $30
As with efficiency, fundraising scores are normalized within each charity category before assigning a letter grade.
Governance (maximum 10 points plus 1 bonus)
The governance category is based on a 27-point scale that is scaled down to 10 points, plus a possible 1-point bonus for disclosing the highest-paid salary. The 27 points break down into 20 points from a governance questionnaire and 5 points for financial statement transparency.
Charities were asked to respond to a governance questionnaire. One point was awarded for answering “yes” to several governance questions (including approval of budgets, audited financial statements, fundraising and governance policies, risk-identification processes, multi-year strategic plans, and CRA filings). One point was also given for board approval and oversight questions, and for certain compliance items. If a charity failed to respond after multiple follow-ups, it received zero for the questionnaire portion.
The questionnaire covered topics such as board approval of key documents, senior staff compensation approval, expense review by board members, board performance reviews, existence of a code of ethics and conflict-of-interest policy, board orientation processes, meeting frequency, investment policies, program effectiveness measurement, fundraising cost oversight, quarterly budget reviews, donor list practices, and whether fundraisers are paid commissions or finder’s fees.
Transparency accounted for the remaining five points: charities received three points for posting complete audited financial statements for their most recent year on their website, and two additional points for also posting the two preceding years. No public statements earned zero points.
The questionnaire plus transparency total produced a score out of 27, which was divided by 2.7 to convert it to a 10-point scale. Charities that disclosed the exact salary of their highest-paid staff member received one extra point on top of the 10-point maximum.
Reserves (maximum 5 points)
Reserves were measured by combining cash and investable assets and expressing that amount as a duration in years and months of operating coverage. Community foundations were excluded from this category because they hold assets on behalf of others.
Points were assigned as follows:
- 0 points for less than one month in reserve
- 2.5 points for 1–3 months
- 5 points for 3 months to 3 years
- 2.5 points for 3–5 years
- 0 points for more than 5 years
Each charity’s reserves score was converted to a letter grade within its category.
Normalization and final grades
After scoring each category, totals (out of a possible 35 points plus the bonus point) were converted to percentages and then normalized within each charity type. This normalization ensures that letter grades reflect relative performance among similar organizations rather than absolute thresholds alone.
Where applicable a charity’s overall grade reflects the combined performance across efficiency, fundraising, governance and reserves, adjusted by the category normalization.
Correction: MoneySense updated the Charity 100 data on July 9, 2013 to correct errors caused by a spreadsheet malfunction. The original data incorrectly reported United Way Ottawa’s program spending percentage. The corrected program spending is 78.3%, which changes its grade in that category to C+ and raises its overall grade to A-. MoneySense apologizes for the error and has corrected the record.