Foundation Choices

Your foundation for creating meaningful change

As family foundations continue to grow in popularity across Canada, Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are becoming an increasingly popular option to help philanthropists achieve their giving goals.

Setting up a Canada Gives Foundation account gives you and your family much more control over how your gifts are managed and disbursed. Charities may change over time, and so may your interests or priorities. With a Canada Gives Foundation account, you can manage how your gifts are spent, creating a lasting charitable legacy across generations.

A Canada Gives Foundation account is unique and gives you the easy administration and flexibility of a DAF, while offering the philanthropic and financial choices you would enjoy with a traditional private foundation.

Establishing a Canadian Foundation

Many prospective philanthropists want to establish a foundation, but find the complexity of the set-up, ongoing governance and reporting duties too onerous. By using a Canada Gives Foundation account to set up a family foundation, a donor benefits from the ease and simplicity of a Donor Advised Fund structure, while maintaining control over how the charitable funding is managed and disbursed.

Rather than hiring a lawyer, drafting by-laws or trust deeds, all you need to do to set up a Canada Gives Foundation account is to complete the Foundation Account Application and we do the rest. There are no costs and your foundation is active immediately.

If you opt for the traditional private foundation registered directly with the Canada Revenue Agency, you must establish a trust or a not-for-profit corporation and then apply to be registered as a charity. In addition to the legal costs, this process may take up to one year to complete. A separate Board of Directors must be established and the meeting minutes, board resolutions, policies must be established and recorded.

Your privacy

Once a Canada Gives Foundation account is opened, all you need to do is fund it with donations and select your preferred charity recipients. There is no direct relationship with CRA, so you have no burdensome liabilities or responsibilities. All financial information is held by Canada Gives and is not available to the public.

By contrast, if a donor opens a traditional private foundation, all of the records are publicly available through the CRA Charities Directorate. Many private and public organizations also list foundations in directories, and the financial activity and holdings are available to everyone who purchases a directory or looks up the foundation on the CRA website.

Administering your foundation

Once a private foundation is active, the operational duties and administration begin. If you set up a Canada Gives Foundation account, however, all of the administration and reporting is managed by our team. That frees up your time to engage with your preferred charities, leaving the processing and recording of each transaction to us.

Here are just a few of the administrative tasks required to operate a foundation:

Processing donations
Issuing tax receipts
Banking
Bookkeeping
Processing grants to charities
Tracking grant receipts

By using a donor advised fund and creating a Canada Gives Foundation account, we take care of all the administrative tasks on your behalf.

Annual reporting to CRA

Canadian foundations are required to complete and submit an Annual Information Return and (audited) financial statements to Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) every year.

With a Canada Gives Foundation account, your foundation is registered under Canada Gives, so all of the Annual Audit and Reporting requirements become our responsibility. We take care of these obligations and bear full responsibility with CRA.

Making grants to charities

Canada Gives will calculate the minimum amount that your foundation is required to disburse to charities each year to meet CRA requirements. We place no restrictions on the maximum granting activity each year, so you decide how much to give away from your foundation if you wish to exceed the minimum level.

You can select any registered charity to receive a gift (also known as a grant) from your foundation at anytime throughout the year. We’re here to facilitate your charitable giving goals and strategies. The good news: we don’t have any conflicting charitable program of our own that will interfere or override your personal philanthropic choices. We do provide due diligence to ensure that the charity, or charities, you select are a qualifying donee according to CRA rules, and are in good standing.

Full disclosure or complete anonymity

Unlike with a private foundation, whose information is fully disclosed publicly, with a Canada Gives Foundation you have the option to have your contact name and address fully disclosed to each charity, or withhold it altogether if you prefer to remain anonymous. It’s your choice!

Simple, powerful philanthropy

Start your foundation

Canada Gives Charitable Registration #83306 2144 RR0001.
You can find us in the Charities Directorate at www.cra-arc.gc.ca

Toronto | Collingwood | Edmonton

1 (844) 583-4483

Canada Gives offices are located on the traditional territory of Indigenous peoples dating back countless generations. We want to show our respect for their contributions and recognize the role of treaty making in what is now Canada. Hundreds of years after the first treaties were signed, they are still relevant today. We seek to do better, to continue to recognize, learn, and grow—in friendship and community, Nation-to-Nation.

Canada Gives Charitable Registration #83306 2144 RR0001.
You can find us in the Charities Directorate at www.cra-arc.gc.ca

Toronto | Collingwood | Edmonton

1 (844) 583-4483

Call Us - 1 (844) 583-4483

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