Charity industry gets some needed scrutiny

Excerpt:

Charity is big business in this country. Canada has 84,771 registered charities that together reported donations of $10-billion in the last 12-month period for which statistics are available. This is five times the revenue of Tim Hortons. More than 23 million people, or 84 per cent of the Canadian population over the age of 15, made personal donations to charities (and other non-profit organizations) and were apparently ready to give more – provided they could be persuaded that their money would be used productively. In one 2008 survey, 80 per cent of people cited a need for more information about charities; in another, 33 per cent cited a lack of confidence in them.

The question is: Can one of the tools of capitalism – professional scrutiny by investment analysts – give wary donors the information they need to make sound donations?

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