How many Canadians donate to charity?

Spoiler alert: if you work in the charitable sector, make sure you read to the end, or you might lose heart.

Statistics Canada released Charitable Giving numbers based on 2020 taxfiler data today. It’s a goldmine of information that I wait for every year.

Fewer donors giving more

Fewer donors are giving more. The number of people donating is down, the total amount of donations is up. This has been the trend for about a decade.

Only 18.4% of Canadians claimed a charitable tax credit on their 2020 Income Tax. They could have pooled their donations with their spouse or saved up their receipts for a future year. They might have contributed to a crowdfunding site or in various other ways that don’t generate a receipt. Still, graphing taxfilers by amount given makes for a stark looking pie chart:

The orange slice of the pie shows the five percent of taxfilers who donated $1,000 or more in 2020. Charitable giving is extremely concentrated.

Median donation

The median donation in 2020 was $340 - half of donors gave more, half gave less. Big caveat: this is the median of people who gave. If it was the median donation for all taxfilers, the median would be zero.

People who give $50 a month to church or charity are much more generous than the typical Canadian. People who contribute that much to more than one charitable cause are in that orange slice of donors who give $1,000+ each year. Many charities rely on this small segment of the population for support. Please thank these faithful donors profusely!

Future hope

For charities to thrive in the future, cultivating generosity will be essential. Cultivating generosity means building trust, connecting people with causes and inspiring hope by demonstrating that change is possible. Seriously hard work? Yes. Joyfully creating a better future? Also yes.

I’m grateful for all the social-profit sector people who persevere in challenging times. Canada needs you. Thank you!