Losing faith in Canadian Charities.

This is an email that we received from a concerned Citizen who has been following the work that we have been doing where we expose practices by certain charities that we consider - regifting.

Our work on educating Citizen's by using data obtained from the Canada Revenue Agency will continue.  We are working on a grading system so people can see how efficient their money is being spent once it's been sent to these charities.  There are many charities that do great work but there are also some that appear to exist only for their own benefit.  Stay tuned.

I spend a lot of time reading Canadian newspapers and can’t believe what I am reading lately regarding our charitable organizations.   The face of most of our large charities has changed and I begin to question the integrity of even those that have managed to stay out of the papers.  

At least weekly there is an article about the dishonesty of the representatives of some of our major charities.  The audits of Tides Canada came as a big surprise to me as I really thought that they were in it for the greater good.   The recent scandal in British Columbia has now topped it all off for me and left me questioning the credibility of many others.

Is it just a huge tax scheme as many will have us believe?  I can’t help but wonder whether it is just a way of sucking money out of our pockets through both donations and tax dollars through each level of government.  These dollars are then to be used for lavish lifestyles that many work very hard to obtain, or never achieve.  I’m sure the residents of British Columbia would like their tax dollars back in their pockets, and the people who left their life savings to Tides wish they had left it to orphans.

I had long become tired of the gloom and doom approach to charitable organizations, such as donate now or the animals will be tortured, or there will be no trees left for your grandchildren as I feel that the positive side of marketing has always been the best approach.  Show us what you have actually accomplished with our money.   When organizations tell me they need money, I want to know that it helped the cause and had an impact on someone’s life.   Why pay contractors to plant trees when there are millions of Canadian students who not only need volunteer hours, but need to get some fresh air.  Our children get much more out of the experience.

It no longer surprises me that organizations need to sell tickets for Aston Martin’s or Cottages in the Muskokas because at least they feel like they may get something out of it.   I’m not saying that many charities don't a great job with managing their money and hunting down donors, but a few are beginning to disgust me.   How can a charity receive 95% of their funding from the Government?   If they are no longer willing to work to collect donations by hitting the roads, or doing recognizable good so that the donors are aware of their good deeds and freely hand over their money, the government should not support them.

The main issue that has angered me personally is when I make a donation to a worthy charity and then that charity turns around and donates money to a charity that I do not support.   My donation was for a purpose, something I believed in, not to be forwarded off to an organization that has not only, not earned my respect, but is for a cause that I deem to be trivial in the grand scheme of things.

There is no longer transparency with our charitable organizations as even the organizations that rate them often have board members who work for the charitable organizations themselves.  That is if you choose to read the small print and not take it at face value.  We have become so complacent and stopped questioning these organizations for whatever reason and some of them are taking serious advantage of our good will.

We all become outraged when we see someone on TV like the “Shaky Lady” or the “Homeless Man” who throws the sandwich back at you because he really just wants money for Booze but in my opinion, “A CROOKED CHARITY IS THE SAME THING!”

I hope my rant is worth a post.