Today, the Toronto Star published a story on the misrepresentation of fundraising costs by Breast Cancer Canada. In trying to simplify the story for the public, they left some detail out that those of us that work in fund-development can guess. While the story sounds like the charity had “two sets of books”, what seems more likely is that they have been less than honest in filling out the T3010 Charitable Information Return that all charities must file within 6 mos of their FYE (Fiscal Year End). This document is very similar to a corporate tax or personal tax return. It can be variously completed within chairties by internal or external bookkeepers or accountants. Sometimes the Auditor themselves completes the return.
One of the questions they are reported to have lied about is whether they employed a third-party fundraiser. I remember arguing with an Auditor who completed the T3010 on behalf of an organization that I worked for where he had not checked this box despite the organization employing a corporate fundraiser at a $40 K a year contract. He argued that the organiznization employed several contract workers that we didn’t thin of as “external” and he was worried about inflating our fundraising costs to a level that could jeopardize our charitable licence. However, we were in no danger of exceeding that level and the honest answer was “yes” we did employ a 3rd party fundraiser. In that case, I felt the Auditor raised a valid point, we looked at the defini
