New report shows funding gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous charities remains astronomical in size
Why It Matters
A second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation has gone by, and Indigenous charities still receive $1 for every $138 received by non-Indigenous charities, while also facing systemic underfunding by governments.
Indigenous people and allies rally in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on July 1, 2021. Photo: Shannon VanRaes
More than a decade after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to document the history and continuing impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system — and years after it released 94 calls to action — a new report shows Indigenous charities and qualified donees only received $1 for every $138 received by non-Indigenous organizations in 2019, the most recent year of data available to researchers.
“That’s the piece that continues to surprise me; 2019 would be four years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) made those calls to action,” said Sharon Redsky, a fundraising consultant based in Treaty 1 Territory, just outside of Winnipeg. “I had assumed there would be a lot more goodwill coming from the philanthropic sector as a result of the TRC.”
Redsky co-authored the Canadian Charities Giving to Indigenous Charities and Qualified Donees – 2019 report with Wanda Brascoupe, Mark Blumberg and Jessie Lang. Together, the charity experts combed through the Canada Revenue Agency’s registered charity information return data from 2019, searching for grants over $30,000 made by registered Canadian charities to Indigenous charities or qualified donees, such as First Nation Governments.
The report did not look at donations made by individuals or corporations.
The authors identified Indigenous organizations using terms and phrases, such as Indigenous, First Nation, Metis, Inuit, Indian, Indian Band, Nation, Tribal council and National Indian Brotherhood. A list developed by Brascoupe for the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Fund was also cross referenced.
“We had to come up with some methodology, which is always something one can debate about — how do you include a group? Is it Indigenous led or is it Indigenous focused or controlled by Indigenous people on the board, there’s so much variety,” said Blumberg, a Toronto charity lawyer. “But we wanted to make an attempt to work through this data and see what it would tell us. Obviously, we were hoping it would be a much better picture than what we found.”
Of the 29,045 grants the report looked at, only 376 appeared to go to Indigenous groups and just nine of those were over $1 million.
Indigenous people are about 4.9 per cent of the population, but Indigenous charities received only slightly more than 0.7 per cent of gifted funds in 2019, totalling about $60 million — a miniscule fraction of the $9.6 billion Canadian charities doled out to other charities and donees that same year. Considered in context of the disproportionate need faced by Indigenous communities, the amount received by Indigenous charities shrinks even further.
Why? That’s “really a question you have to ask the funds,” said Brascoupe, co-founder of the Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund. But she added that misconceptions about the federal government’s role in Indigenous communities are a contributing factor.
“Canada has a narrative, that Canadians have been told and believe … and that is that the federal government takes care of us from birth to death, that we get free healthcare, free education, free this and that. We have these myths,” Brascoupe said. “But those myths are not truth.”
The funding gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous organizations also occurs in the shadow of the Indian Act, Redsky said. It was illegal for Indigenous communities in Canada to generate wealth, fundraise or participate in traditional acts of giving or charity until 1951.
There have been some signs of improvement, albeit small ones.
Between 2018-19, the number of gifts over $100,000 made to Indigenous charities and registered donees climbed from 117 to 156. The total amount given to Indigenous organizations also rose by about $15 million over that same period.
The report’s authors also noted individual Canadians appear to be pivoting more quickly than charitable foundations when it comes to contributing to Indigenous organizations and causes, particularly as the number of unmarked graves linked to former residential schools continue to grow, forcing settlers to confront the country’s colonial legacy.
In 2021, as the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation was announced, a group of settlers and newcomers, guided by The Circle on Philanthropy, launched a grassroots effort “to meaningfully recognize and commemorate the tragic history and ongoing legacy of residential schools, and to honour their survivors, their families and communities.”
One Day’s Pay asks Canadians to donate the equivalent of one day’s wages to an Indigenous organization each year, without expecting a tax receipt in return. Last year, the campaign raised nearly half a million dollars for the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and The Orange Shirt Society.
“We really wanted to promote conversations about reconciliation,” said campaign founder, Josh Hensman. “No money passes through our hands. We’re just using sweat equity from the members of One Day’s Pay to get the word out and try to get money into the hands of Indigenous organizations.”
Brascoupe is encouraged by the collective conversation that’s been building over the last few years and said incremental change is happening in the charity and philanthropic sector, when it comes to partnering with Indigenous organizations.
She expects to see more funds going to Indigenous charities and donees, when registered charity information return data from 2020 and 2021 is analyzed in the coming years.
“From my perspective, I think what’s lacking is risk. If you look at the financial wealth that makes foundations possible, what created that wealth is that someone, somewhere down the road took a risk,” she said. “And moving in a new direction means a bit of risk.”
The MakeWay foundation has been supporting Indigenous charities and qualified donees for about two decades. In 2019, it funded projects in Kitasoo First Nation and provided grants to the Tahltan Band Council, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and other Indigenous organizations.
“MakeWay definitely is an outlier and part of the reason we’re able to give effectively to the Indigenous populations of this country is that we have personnel located in those regions, who often are indigenous themselves,” said Steven Ellis, MakeWay’s program lead in Northern Canada. “Indigenous peoples always fall at the lower end of the spectrum with respect to receiving services and programs from private and public institutions, and the charitable sector is fully guilty of that as well.”
If Indigenous communities and organizations are to effectively tap into the philanthropic sector, Redsky said the federal government needs to provide funding specifically aimed at capacity building. “There needs to be that investment, but I also think it’s important that this comes across as a shared responsibility, that really honours the intent of the TRC’s calls to action” she said, referring to the role of government in reconciliation.
In an emailed response, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada noted recent investments made by the federal government in Indigenous organizations, and agreed that “more needs to be done to foster equity and reconciliation” and encouraged “the charitable sector as a whole to increase its support of Indigenous groups.”
Another misconception the report’s authors want to challenge? That Indigenous organizations only act as recipients and not donors. The 2019 report shows at least $1.2 million was given by Indigenous charities to other Indigenous charities that year.
“That’s what I have hope in: the amazing Indigenous-led charities that are taking their own values and applying them to philanthropy,” Redsky said, pointing to the Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund. “It’s an example of a really positive initiative; a fund led by Indigenous people, for Indigenous people … and an indication of where we can start to go as a community.”
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