Usamah Quick collects food donations for the Daily Bread Food Bank, which has seen a surge in clients, to help as well as engage with his community.JENNIFER ROBERTS/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
When Usamah Quick decided to switch careers from social work to real estate, he wanted to do something to engage meaningfully with potential clients in his community.
“The first order of business is to knock on people’s doors and engage them. So, I thought to myself, how am I going to do this? It feels really gross to be like, ‘Hey, here’s my card.’” So, Quick decided to do something that people around him needed the most. After a bit of research, he found that the Daily Bread Food Bank, one of the largest food banks in Canada, had seen a surge in clients in the last year.
In fact, in a 2021 report, the organization said it recorded 1.45 million visits to Toronto food banks, the highest number of visits ever recorded in the city. And for the first time, new clients outnumbered existing clients with a 61-per-cent increase compared to the year prior.
So, Quick sponsored a food drive, where residents in his community donated non-perishable food items that he collected and delivered to the food bank. On Thanksgiving, Quick estimates he collected over 200 pounds of food items for the organization, with more to come. “This is a crisis in our city,” he says.
While there’s an increased need for charity organizations, research from CanadaHelps shows there has been a steady decline in the percentage of Canadians donating to them. CanadaHelps’ 2022 Giving Report shows that only 19 per cent of 2019 tax filers claimed donations versus 25 per cent in 2006. The report shows that the most acute decline in giving is amongst Generation X (40 to 54 years old) and families in higher income brackets. And if not for an increase in giving from Canadians aged 55 years and older, charities would be experiencing even steeper declines in funding.
“What we’re concerned with is, as this cohort begins to age, there’s nobody coming up underneath who’s filling in that [giving] gap,” says Jane Ricciardelli, chief operating officer and acting chief executive officer of CanadaHelps.
With a recession looming, many in the philanthropic sector are concerned about what increased financial insecurity will mean for charitable organizations. Ricciardelli says CanadaHelps found that 25 per cent of Canadians are planning to give less in 2022 due to the impact of the pandemic and rising inflation. These same reasons could increase the demand for charities, with up to 26 per cent of Canadians turning to them to meet basic needs.
“We sort of have this pendulum where you have people who are planning to give less, but we also saw a lot of Canadians who were anticipating they would need to be more reliant on charities to meet their needs due to interest and inflation,” she explains.
Neil Hetherington, CEO of the Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto, says rising inflation means more people will turn to food banks while the organization will have to spend more money to service clients because of higher food prices. “So, we’re hit both on the length of the lineup outside the food bank, as well as the cost to service that lineup,” says Hetherington.
While financial pressures are a concern for many Canadians, those who can give to charities are still donating. Lorraine Baldwin, a communications professional based in British Columbia, says the pandemic highlighted the greater need for support. “I think what COVID did is it pushed people over to the edge.”
Baldwin says her family didn’t face any major financial changes, like the loss of a job, so she felt it was their responsibility to continue giving. “I was raised to believe that if you’re born with a longer table, you invite people to sit down to it. So, if you’re born with abundance, it’s your responsibility to give more. I’ve always lived my life that way.”
While food insecurity is a kitchen table conversation for many Canadians, other issues like climate crises and humanitarian issues such as war and famine are also competing for their attention and dollars. To make the decision of which organizations their money will go to, Canadians are asking deeper questions about a charity’s results and impact, says Kate Bahen, managing director of Charity Intelligence Canada, an organization that analyzes charities.
Bahen points to the CanadaHelps report, which showed that Canadians’ largest expectation of charities was to report information about its effectiveness. “To me, this shows how Canadians are getting smarter about their giving,” Bahen said in an e-mail.
Diane Ferguson, an accountant and writer based in Owen Sound, says she donates to notable charities like Doctors Without Borders, Amnesty International, and the United Way because she can verify their track record. “I picked big names, because they have the history,” she says.
When researching where to donate, Ferguson says she takes into consideration organizations’ budgets and the breakdown of how they spend the money they receive. While expenses like administrative costs are necessary for organizations to run, she says it’s important to her that enough money is going toward the cause. “I want to try and make sure the money is going where it needs to go.”
What motivates Canadians to donate their money differs across generations. According to CanadaHelps, younger Canadians are particularly interested in supporting social justice issues, with many reporting that racial inequality and supporting marginalized groups were more important causes to them compared to older generations.
However, one issue that has strong support across all generations is climate change. With recent climate-related disasters in the news, Ricciardelli says Canadians are stepping up their giving. As of Sept. 30, Ricciardelli says $700,000 has been raised in support of charities providing relief for Hurricane Fiona, and more than $1-million has been raised for the floods in Pakistan. “Canadians really step up in times of crisis and support. And it doesn’t matter where in the world it is.”
Ricciardelli says the media also plays a part in where Canadians donate. According to data provided by CanadaHelps, $18.7-million was raised in support of relief efforts for Ukraine during the early months of the war, in February and March. Donations from April through September slipped to $6.7-million.
In September, Sadiya Ansari, a Canadian journalist based in Berlin, says she worked alongside six other Canadian journalists to raise more than $10,000 in emergency relief funds for Pakistan, which suffered huge, damaging floods earlier this year, after it felt like people no longer cared about the devastation.
“It just shows what you can do if you put something on people’s radar, if you give them an outlet to donate, [and] if you care enough to keep bringing it up.”