Thinking about Charities: Public Awareness Survey 2008

Prepared for the:
Public Affairs Branch
Canada Revenue Agency
FINAL REPORT
March 2008
POR# 215-07
Contract #46558-084507

Prepared by:
Environics Research Group

Le rapport complet en français sera fourni sur demande.

To request a full copy of this report, please contact Library and Archives Canada at:
613-996-5115 or 1-866-578-7777 or www.collectionscanada.ca

Media Enquiries:
Media Relations
Canada Revenue Agency
4th Floor 555 MacKenzie Avenue
Ottawa ON K1A 0L5
media.relations@cra-arc.gc.ca

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Executive Summary

Research purpose and objectives

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is responsible for administering taxation laws for the Government of Canada, including responsibility for the regulation of registered charities. In 2004, the federal government announced the Charities Regulatory Reform Initiative to help improve the legislative and regulatory environment in which the voluntary sector operates, and to improve the way in which charities are regulated. This initiative is a five-year action plan for change that focuses on five major areas of charity regulation: public awareness and sector outreach; service improvements; monitoring and sanctions; appeals; and collaboration among federal, provincial and territorial governments. One of the goals of the initiative is to increase public and voluntary sector confidence in the regulation of charities.

In 2005, the CRA conducted a baseline survey called Thinking About Charities to provide input into the development of a public education initiative to increase the confidence of the Canadian public in the federal government's regulation of charities. The public education campaign was launched in November 2006 and included a website designed to provide information about charities to donors (http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/donors/). Topics covered on the site include tax benefits and receipts, how charities are regulated, donor fraud alerts and information on searching for registered charities on-line. Since the launch of the website, the CRA has placed a series of public notices in newspapers nationwide, issued a press release, and exhibited at trade shows and conferences across the country.

The CRA identified a need to conduct a follow-up survey in 2008, to evaluate education efforts to date in terms of public awareness and knowledge of charities and of their regulation, to provide input into future approaches and activities, and to identify progress since 2005.

Methodology

The Agency's 2008 Thinking About Charities survey was conducted by Environics Research Group. The survey consisted of telephone interviews conducted from January 3 to February 3, 2008, with 3,003 Canadians. The questionnaire repeated a number of questions used in 2005 for the purpose of comparability, with some new questions added to test understanding of what a registered charity is and awareness of features of the CRA Charities website. The sample was stratified to provide meaningful results in each of the 10 provinces. A national sample of this size provides results accurate to within plus or minus 1.8 percentage points in 19 out of 20 samples (larger margins of error apply for subgroups of this population). A more detailed description of the methodology used to conduct this survey is presented at the back of the full report, along with a copy of the questionnaire.

Key findings

The 2008 Thinking About Charities survey reveals that, as in 2005, Canadians believe that charities are very important to society, contribute to them in large numbers and place strong importance on the value of charity registration.

The findings of this survey also indicate that there continue to be significant knowledge gaps regarding the regulation of charities. Few can name any organization responsible for monitoring charities in Canada, and fewer still associate this function with the CRA, although there has been a notable increase in the proportion of Canadians who are aware that there are organizations responsible for monitoring charities. As such, few express strong confidence that charities are being well-regulated. As more Canadians become aware of the CRA's involvement in charity registration, their confidence in how well charities are being monitored in Canada should increase.

The value of an effective registration and reporting system for charities is recognized, despite lack of specific knowledge about such an existing system. Most Canadians continue to agree that they would only donate to registered charities, and close to half believe there is a serious problem with organizations that fraudulently collect money as donations. Most acknowledge that more information on charity regulation is needed to ensure that donations are made wisely, and there is considerable interest among Canadians in learning more about this topic.

Visits to the CRA Charities website to access charity information have increased since 2005 but remain low, indicating that even greater promotion is needed to make Canadians aware of the extensive and valuable resources available on the site.

Following are key findings of this research.

Knowledge and awareness of the regulation of charities

• Over one-third of Canadians believe they have seen advertising and/or information about how to donate wisely or how charities work in Canada, but relatively few can recall specifically what information was noticed. Such information is most frequently reported as being seen on television.
• Six in ten Canadians are able to state their impression of what is meant by a "registered charity," mostly referring to government licensing or the issuing of tax receipts. Very few mention the CRA in an unprompted manner in connection with charity registration.
• Prompted awareness that Canadians are able to claim donations to registered charities on their income tax is almost universal.
• The majority of Canadians are not able to identify a way that someone could confirm a charity's registration status.
• Four in ten Canadians believe there is an organization responsible for monitoring charities in Canada, a sizeable increase over 2005's three in ten, but very few can name such an organization. One in ten identify the CRA or the Charities Directorate, a minor increase from 2005.
• Canadians are three times as likely to believe charities are being regulated well than poorly, but three in ten cannot express a clear opinion either way.
• The effective oversight of charities remains an important issue to Canadians: the majority agree they would only donate to registered charities (79%), and many agree that there is a serious problem with organizations fraudulently collecting money as donations (47%).
• As in 2005, most Canadians understand that charities must be registered to issue official tax receipts, but knowledge of CRA regulation activities and awareness of the difference between a registered charity and a non-profit organization have increased modestly.

The CRA website

• There has been a modest increase in the proportion of Canadians who say they have ever visited the CRA website to find information on registered charities, but the proportion who have done so remains small (7%).
• Satisfaction with the charities section of the CRA website has increased somewhat since 2005 in terms of information being easy to use (48% vs. 45%) and understand (57% vs. 49%).
• Half of the Canadians who have ever visited the CRA site to seek information about registered charities say they have used the Charities Listings. Few CRA website visitors are aware of the "Giving to charity" section of the site, but there is clear interest expressed in a site containing this type of donor information.

Personal charitable decision-making and giving

• The majority of Canadians continue to believe that charities play an important role in society and four in ten feel charities are "very important," an identical result to 2005.
• Two-thirds of Canadians say they made a donation to a registered charity in the past year, unchanged from 2005, but the proportion claiming to have donated $250 or more has increased notably from 2005 (44%, up 8 percentage points).
• Canadians continue to feel that knowing how a charity spends money, and believing in or being connected to the charity's cause are the most important factors in deciding to donate. Lower importance is placed on getting a tax receipt, but respondents rated this factor higher than in 2005.
• In the past year, more than half of Canadians decided against donating to a charity because they did not have enough information about it.

Interest in learning more

• Six in ten Canadians are at least somewhat interested in learning more about how charities are monitored in Canada, a notable increase from 2005 (five in ten).
• As in 2005, the burden of responsibility for providing the public with information about registered charities is most widely placed on the charities themselves, although most Canadians also see a role for federal and provincial governments.
• Canadians are most interested in obtaining information about how to learn if a charity is registered or if it can issue tax receipts, but would also value learning about where the money goes and the charity's mandate; Internet and mail are preferred communications methods for receiving information on these topics.
• The number of Canadians who would prefer to contact the CRA via the website for information on registered charities has increased since 2005; advertising in the media or brochures in government mailings are preferred ways for CRA to proactively disseminate this type of information.