For over 35 years, my mission has been to help individuals and families to become more engaged, fulfilled and effective philanthropists - and to ensure real public benefit.
This is my personal website. It’s a public archive of my 25+ years of writing about philanthropy, planning, public policy, art, and governance.
Endowments are an important funding mechanism within the charitable sector, but we have gone through a period where we have built up the mythology of endowments without adequate critical reflection. There are other funding models, such as Schulich’s high-payout funds and spend-down funds. Capital can also be invested in enterprises that produce both monetary as well as mission return. Can we make better use of our charitable capital?
The middle ground between the immediately expendable fund and the perpetual endowment is the spend-down or time-limited fund. They are now offered by institutional charities as well as public foundations with donor advised funds. A “spend-down” fund is created with a single large gift, but expended within a defined period of time for maximum philanthropic benefit. With estate gifts the timetable is built in upfront. For example, the fund may pay out in equal instalments over ten years.
This March 2015 article was published in The Philanthropist Journal when I was co-editor. It is the introduction to an influential series on Canadian Charities Working Internationally, which eventually led to new rules that enable grants to non-qualified donees in the Income Tax Act 2022. These rules also apply to grants to other entities carrying out charitable work, such as Canadian not-for-profit organizations.
Changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rates and rules are scheduled to take effect on January 1 and for the first time AMT will apply to charitable donations from high-income individuals. This is poor tax policy that will produce unintended community harm, as I recently outlined elsewhere. Intelligence Memo published by CD Howe Institute
Imagine Canada is doing a public consultation on whether Canada should increase the donation tax credit rate to encourage more giving. This is my response. April 4, 2025
Charities do not exclusively depend on donations, despite popular perceptions to the contrary. In Canada, government funding and earned revenue contribute more to registered charities than donations. Both these types of low-key funding are under pressure, enough so that we will soon witness some large charities shrink or even collapse. February 2025
In the 1970s, Canadian charity law dramatically evolved and became imbedded in the Income Tax Act. While this is ancient history, I have personal connections with the drafting Working Group at the Department of Finance that I rediscovered. To my delight, after 45 years, I reconnected with one of the drafters in Ottawa this summer. Aura (Elliott) Vaucrosson was the mother of one of my childhood friends, Jean-Paul, or JP. At the time, I had no idea about her professional life, and I couldn’t imagine how it would connect with mine. September 2024
A hot topic among charities is anonymous grants from foundations with donor advised funds. Charities receive grants but they often don’t know the identity of the donor or fund that recommended the grant. It is an important for both foundations and charities to work together to make the process better. May 2024
Technology sometimes produces unanticipated consequences. Witness Canada Revenue Agency. To its credit, CRA has implemented secure, mostly user-friendly technology over the past 20 years. For charities this includes online accounts and user-friendly “checklist” tools for charities. Unfortunately, these features sometimes create a special set of challenges for registered charities and testamentary private foundations. March 2024
Changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) rates and rules are scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2024. For the first time AMT will apply to charitable donations from high-income individuals, which is worrying for charities and donors. Simply, targeting donations is poor tax policy that will produce unintended community harm. September 2023
Since the announcement of the “estate donation” rules in the 2014 Federal Budget, there have been a number of amendments that have addressed sector concerns and drafting errors. One unintended consequence in the original estate donation provisions relates to gifts of private company shares.
The announcement in the 2015 Federal Budget that capital gains would be eliminated on donations involving private company shares and real estate was short on detail. As a result the measure, which would be effective beginning 2017, was not passed by Parliament. In mid-summer, the Department of Finance released the technical details and invited public comment. Feedback is due on September 30, 2015.
What’s a charity to do when a donor asks for a gift to be returned? As my fellow blogger Derek de Gannes recently reported, CRA provided a technical interpretation in response to a charity inquiry relating to life insurance policy donated in 1981.
Until 2010, the disbursement quota provisions in the Income Tax Act mandated that charities handle donations in one of two ways: for immediate use or held as long-term endowments through the “10-year gift” capital hold mechanism. These binary rules drove donor and charity behaviour. The 2010 reforms provided charities with greater flexibility regarding the acceptance and use of funds. They have also transformed the way major donors plan their philanthropic legacies.
The interconnectedness of registered charities and journalism is growing. In this era of digital content explosion and “fake news”, traditional media outlets — especially newspapers — are seeking new ways to serve their communities and survive. Increasingly, public benefit non-profit journalism is becoming a charitable activity. There are estate donors who are interested in supporting this space.