Charity Intelligence Canada

Charity Intelligence Canada is a Toronto-based nonprofit organization which posts assessments of the finances and impacts of Canadian charities on its website. Founded in 2007 by former equity analyst Kate Bahen, its unconventional methodologies drawn from Bahen’s stock market background have attracted criticism.

Bahen has actively and successfully promoted Charity Intelligence’s profile in the news, prominently alleging wrongdoing by several mainstream charities and facing questioning before the Canadian Parliament. Several of Charity Intelligence’s board members have ties to the Conservative Party.

About
Charity Intelligence was launched in 2008 to research charities and advise donors on where to spend their money. In addition to providing advice, Charity Intelligence distributes clients' money to selected charities, handling $442,000 in donor cash transactions in 2010.

CTV News described Ci as is an "organization that monitors other charities to measure the impact they actually have with the donations they collect". In 2020, MoneySense used data from the "third-party watchdog Charity Intelligence Canada" and Canada Revenue Agency in compiling their own top 100 charities list.

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, Charity Intelligence Canada's managing director, Kate Bahen, who formerly worked as a Bay Street equity analyst, said that people who give to charities are well-intentioned, but they "often under-examine" the "effectiveness" of their giving. "Despite the best of intentions, the effectiveness of our giving is often underexamined", says Kate Bahen, managing director of Charity Intelligence Canada, which provides detailed reports on Canadian charities. The Globe described the "Toronto-based research organization"—which "provides detailed reports on Canadian charities"—as a "leading source of information on the real-world impact of Canadian giving". The Globe said that Ci "watchdog group...analyzes charities' financial activities on behalf of large donors." Bahen said that Charity Intelligence Canada takes a "strict definition of impact...determined by a cost-benefit analysis, looking at the demonstrated positive effect of every dollar you donate." The "impact-driven approach has become the centre of a philanthropic movement known as "effective altruism", that is part of the "new frontier in charity evaluation", according to Bahen.

Organizations that have received a high ranking have quoted and linked back to Charity Intelligence’s website in their press releases and fund-raising efforts, as well as to promote partnerships with for-profit enterprises.

Loss of charitable status
On September 15, 2012, the Canada Revenue Agency revoked Charity Intelligence Canada's charitable status due to its failure to file the required annual financial report for 2011 within six months of the fiscal year. As a result, Charity Intelligence was prohibited from issuing tax receipts and was required to pay a $500 penalty before reapplying for charitable status. The Revenue Agency had notified Charity Intelligence in April 2012 to provide them more time to file, but CI did not follow through.

The Globe and Mail's Paul Waldie quotes Charity Intelligence's managing director Kate Bahen as saying, "Yes, the optics aren't good. "I'm [angry] at myself, absolutely. It's just administration, that's it," while head of donor advisory services Bri Typuc downplayed the event, saying "It was just an administrative oversight — it was just a late filing." Don McGreesh, former chairman of Imagine Canada, commented "I shook my head and laughed…Why would they, of all people, fail to file?" Association of Fundraising Professionals chair Andrea McManus observed, "Lots of charities forget [to file] and they are pilloried for it. I think that CI would view that as a lack of effective management, or a lack of transparency, and here they are in the same situation."

In the media
In their May 2016 article, the Globe and Mail reported that Ci's Kate Bahen had been "alarmed when she first saw the Red Cross's early reports on its Lac-Mégantic spending". She said that a "rapid response to distributing large sums of cash is critical, noting studies of disasters have shown that having a sense of financial security quickly after a crisis is the single largest determinant in how well people bounce back emotionally from disasters." and therefore recommended that "would-be donors support local community charities in Fort McMurray and Edmonton, saying local groups were the most impressive in their quick response in both Lac-Mégantic and the Alberta floods." The Red Cross had received $14.8-million following the 2013 Lac-Mégantic train explosion, but only issued "$300,000 on an emergency basis to local residents in the first month after the disaster". By May 9, As it Happens, the Red Cross had collected close to $60 million in private donations which did not include "funds matched by both governments."

The Globe and Mail interviewed Ci's manager for their article on the efficacy of charitable giving in Canada.

CBC News cited Charity Intelligence Canada in their 2019 report on Canada's professional sports teams, such as the National Hockey League (NHL). The Ci suggested donors investigate more fully before giving to pro-sports charities, "citing lack of transparency, high fundraising costs and excessive cash reserves as reasons."

In a ZoomerMedia November 24, 2019 interview, Behen described how CI measures the impact of a charity by weighing the cost of delivering the program against the value on the social benefit produces. When asked why so few cancer charities had the 4-star rating for a high impact charity, Behan said that well-known successful cancer charities have a lower impact rating because they are spending much more on fund-raising while holding on to donations instead of spending enough on charitable work.

Following the start of the 2020 We Charity controversy, We Charity including its relationship with the for profit Me to We came under scrutiny. CBC's The Current and Canadaland both interviewed Charity Intelligence regarding the organization's concerns about We Charity, which were identified prior to the We Charity controversy.

Methodology
Soon after introducing its online search engine in November 2011, Charity Intelligence Canada's methods of rating charities came under criticism from various charities and charity analysists. According to Charity Village's Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf, the site "caught the attention of the sector, not necessarily for its usefulness, but for what many sector experts are calling a naïve analysis of data and lack of knowledge of CRA guidelines and how nonprofits in Canada actually work." Association of Fundraising Professionals chair Andrea McManus credited Charity Intelligence's work with raising donor awareness, but said that its analyses can be misleading.

Charity Intelligence's founder and managing director Kate Bahen describes Charity Intelligence's approach as similar to that of a financial analyst researching stocks. On an early version of its website, Charity Intelligence said that it used "investment analysis techniques which are, by no means, the best tools, but are the only ones we knew how to use." Imagine Canada president Marcel Lauzière and former chair Don McGreech criticized the approach of treating charities as if they were corporations as overly simplistic, with Lauzière commenting, "They’ve taken a [data-gathering] model from the investment world, where you look at inputs and then tell your investors where to put their dollars…it’s not that simple when you’re looking at charities and at their outcomes and impacts."

Another common theme of criticism is that Charity Intelligence takes a generic approach which ignores the substance of charities' work. Scotiabank's head of philanthropic advisory services Malcolm Burrows commented, "I sometimes wonder how much [Ci] actually understands the nature of the sector. For one, they haven’t acknowledged that there is a massive range of charities in Canada…Ci seems to want to put all of them into a single space, and I think that does a real disservice. They need to look at that before they make these huge generalizations in public…You can’t have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ standard of accountability in the sector." Marcel Lauzière complained, '“It’s a real disservice to Canadians because the information they’re putting in front of people means nothing if it’s not contextualized. It’s as simple as that."

Charity Intelligence complained that 19 of 100 charities refused to provide them financial information to populate their online tool, including famous charities such as The Children’s Wish Foundation, The War Amps, The Royal Ontario Museum Foundation and the Aga Khan Foundation. Aga Khan Foundation of Canada's director of public affairs, Jennifer Pepall, said that Charity Intelligence's assumptions about its finances and motivations were inaccurate. The War Amps of Canada wrote, "The numbers [Ci] associated with The War Amps are misrepresentative of our charitable activity", specifically rebutting Charity Intelligene's allegations that it uses professional fundraisers, receives government grants, solicits by phone or door-to-door, sells or trades donor's names and addresses, spends more than 10% on administration or puts funds towards long-term investments. Pointing out that its financials were publicly available in its annual T3010 returns, it called Charity Intelligence's claim that it refused to provide the information misleading. Toronto charity lawyer Mark Blumberg took an intermediate position, writing, "While I agree that larger charities that typically have audited financial statements should place them on their website, it is not a legal requirement."

Puck Hogs
Charity Intelligence's managing director Kate Bahen has called several charities "puck hog(s)", a hockey term repurposed to refer to pie chart graphs of financial data.

In October 2018, in an interview with CityNews, Bahen cricitized the Calgary Flames Foundation, alleging a lack of transparency, high funding costs and disproportionate savings in fiscal year 2017, calling it a puck hog and ranking it the worst among eight foundations associated with Canadian sports teams. Bahen commented, "So ... be a fan, cheer for the Flames, but seriously if you are looking at giving and in your giving to have impact and really go to help people, you have so many choices in Calgary." Calgary Flames defended itself, pointing out that 50/50 charity events, in which half of fan ticket prices are donated to charity, have a 50% funding cost per dollar raised by their nature and that reserves were necessary to ensure that they could meet their commitments going forward.

On May 1, 2019, Bahen wrote a formal letter of apology to True North Youth Foundation, in which she apologized for calling it a puck hog during an interview with CityNews and acknowledged that True North operates its own youth charity programs in Manitoba. Bahen wrote, "I understand that my unfortunate mischaracterization of TNYF may have left people with the impression that they should not consider supporting TNYF, and for that I want to unequivocally apologize."

Questioning by Parliament
On August 6, 2020, Charity Intelligence Canada's managing director Kate Bahen and director of research Greg Thomson were questioned in a two-hour meeting of the parliamentary committee about its public statements against WE Charity. Bahen had alleged in numerous high-profile interviews that the charity was on the brink of insolvency before the Trudeau government selected it to administer the proposed Canada Student Service Grant program.

The MPs questioned Charity Intelligence's track record and their adequacy of their analyses. MP Peter Fragiskatos, referring to the small size of the organization, commented, "It’s hard for me to understand how an organization of four people can judge 250 organizations on a range of criteria, delve in and offer an enormous set of judgments."

MP Francesco Sorbara asked why in 2012 CI had lost its own charitable status, to which Bahen responded, "It was a hard lesson learned well". Sorbara alleged that one of CI's team had donated what he called "substantial sums" to the Conservative Party, and asked Bahen about her formal apology to True North Youth Foundation.

MP Adam Vaughan observed that, despite Canada being a bilingual country, Charity Intelligence included only two French-language charities in its top 100 list. Bahen replied that Quebec charities rarely post financial statements on their websites.

Ties to Conservative Party
Charity Intelligence Canada has ties to the Conservative Party through board member Graeme C. Hepburn and his wife Claudia, who is the niece of Galen Weston and an heir to the Weston family fortune as well as a former director and senior fellow at the right-wing Fraser Institute. Hepburn has donated to Conservatives 56 times and contributed over $43,000, his largest contribution of just under $10,000 in 2020 when Charity Intelligence was being questioned before Parliament.

In 2009, the Hepburns hosted a fundraiser for Ontario Progressive Conservative candidate Tim Hudak. In the coming years, Graeme Hepburn would donate nearly $6,200 to the Progressive Conservatives.

In 2021, Doug Ford's Progressive Conservative Ontario government.appointed Claudia Hepburn to the board of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario by Order in Council. The next year, she donated $1,200 to the Progressive Conservatives in addition to nearly $24,000 she'd previously donated to federal Conservatives.

Kate Bahen also donated nearly $1,000 to the Conservative Party in 2012 and 2015.

High salaries for nonprofit executives
In a June 23, 2014 interview with The Ottawa Citizen, Charity Intelligence Canada's research director Greg Thomson said that charities are best served by hiring the "best fundraisers" to lead their organizations and that annual salaries of $350,000 or more reflect their value. Thomson added, “I work for a registered salary. Would I want my salary published? No. It’s a private thing.”