United Way, Employee Giving and Centre For inquiry Canada
CFI Canada is the leading Canadian charitable organization dedicated to secularism, skepticism, science and free thought…. we need your support!
If your employer provides a United Way employee-giving campaign, or manages one directly (such as the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign mentioned below), you can support CFI Canada by designating our charitable number. Ask your Employee Campaign Coordinator or team about directing your donation to a charity of your choice, or ask your United Way agency about their Designated Gift Policy. Here are a couple of examples to help you inquire about your local designation options: UBC Campaign in BC says: United Way of the Lower Mainland’s annual campaign presents donors with several giving options. One option allows donors to directly designate gifts to any registered Canadian charity. According to CharityIntelligence.ca United Way of Ottawa supports and invests in over 100 agency programs and services….touched all of the 107 neighborhoods across Ottawa. UWO co-manages the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign (GCWCC) run in all 101 government departments and agencies. This results in a high level of donor-designated donations that UWO collects and disburses to the charities of the donor’s choice.- as a registered charity,we are able to issue charitable receipts and receive gifts via United Way or employee giving
- Your gift of $10, $25 or $50 will go help to fulfill our 2015 donation target of $60,000
- CFI Canada is volunteer-driven and directed – we do not have a large staff or administrative overhead
Gifts in Kind at Centre For Inquiry Canada
What are Gifts in Kind?
Gifts-in-Kind are donations of property or assets. Often people are interested to know if a donation of a service qualifies as a gift in kind. Here is Canada Revenue Agencies answer to that question:
Gifts in kind of a taxpayer include capital property, depreciable property, personal-use property including listed personal property (see the current version of IT-332), a leasehold interest, a residual interest (see the current version of IT-226), a right of any kind whatever, a licence, a share, a chose in action and inventory of a business. A gift in kind, however, does not include a gift of services.
Gifts of services are still possible, but require several distinct transactions to satisfy CRA guidelines. Here is an example:
The Donor wishes to give CFI Canada a real estate property and maintenance services. Under CRA rules, the property would qualify as a gift-in-kind and would be eligible for a tax receipt based on fair market valuation. The maintenance services are not a gift-in-kind. The procedure to process that gift would be for the donor to: 1) donor provides the services 2) donor issues a fair market value invoice to CFIC 3) CFIC to issues a cheque to pay the invoice 4) the donor makes a gift to CFIC in the amount of the invoice/payment. This creates separate financial transactions at each step of the process in the fair market value of the service.
Another common question about Gifts-in-Kind regard the value of the charitable receipt. Charitable receipts must be issued for the fair market value of any gift-in-kind. Again, using CRA as our reference:
The fair market value of a gift in kind is also the relevant amount for the purposes of calculating the non-refundable and non-transferable federal tax credit under subsection 118.1(3) for individuals after 1987 and the deductible gift under subsection 110.1(1) for corporations after 1987, as well as the deductible gift under the legislation as it applied to all taxpayers prior to the 1988 taxation year. The fair market value of a gift in kind as of the date of the donation (the date on which beneficial ownership is transferred from the donor to the donee) must be determined before an amount can be recorded on a receipt for tax purposes. If the property was owned on Valuation Day (December 31, 1971), a valuation as of that date may also be required for capital gains purposes. The person who determines the fair market value of the property must be competent and qualified to evaluate the particular property being transferred by way of a gift. Property of little or only nominal value to the donor will not qualify as a gift in kind. Used clothing of little value would be an example of a non-qualifying contribution.
Gifts in Kind can be a terrific way to support CFI Canada. A few of our current needs include:
– office supplies (paper, pens, etc)
– real estate to establish a physical branch in your community
– cars (for scrap or resale) through Donate A Car Canada
– relevant art or collectibles for the CFIC library
– books for the CFIC library
– vacation property for annual fundraisers (eg. time shares, cottage)
We recommend that supporters familiarize themselves with Canada Revenue Agencies (CRA) charitable giving guidelines for Gifts-In-Kind.
Planned Giving At Centre For Inquiry Canada
What is Planned Giving?
Planned giving is the process of including charitable giving as part of your personal financial plans. Typically planned giving includes a variety of tools such as wills, bequests, life insurance, annuities and even stocks or bonds. Planned giving is usually a method to make significantly larger gifts to a charity or cause you care about.
The Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) has an excellent program called Leave a Legacy designed to educate Canadians about gift planning. CAGP’s top ten advice when planning gifts to charity:
- Prepare a will
- Leave a gift
- Be Specific
- Consider assets
- Name an alternate beneficiary
- Existing life insurance
- New life insurance
- Memorial gifts
- Encourage others
- Ask your advisor
CFI Canada, as a registered charity, is eligible to issue charitable tax receipts, which may be of significant value to you whether you are planning your estate or taking advantage of annual tax credits. Here are a few additional tips to consider:
Legal Language: Leaving a gift to Centre For Inquiry Canada in your will is a generous way to support the organization. It is important to ensure that you stipulate your gift preferences in clear language that does not leave room for challenge or dispute. Our Legal name is “Centre For Inquiry Canada – Le Centre Pour L’enquete”. If you wish to designate your gift to a specific service or programme that you care about, that should be clearly stated in your will. Contact ned@cficanada.ca if you’d like sample language for a bequest or to advise us of your gift intentions.
Life Insurance: Can be a way to make a much larger gift to CFI Canada. Premiums paid are tax deductible gifts and a life insurance policy can allow you to make a gift of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Endowments: Are you interested to see your gift work for CFI Canada indefinitely? Endowments are gifts which are intended to be invested and grow over the long term. A named endowment can be directed to specific uses with a designated portion of earned income of the endowed funds being directed annually to our charitable work.
Legal and Financial Advice: Always seek legal and financial advice from your own advisors and experts. Any gift planning strategy you undertake must ethically meet your needs and objectives as a donor.
Are Organized Religions a Possible Public Health Hazard “Vector”? Apparently we have our job to do…
During CFI Canada’s monitoring of public health concerns such as anti-vaccination proponents, we often encounter pseudo-scientific claims and fears from people who either ignore or don’t understand the science behind vaccination and immunization. However, we’ve lately also noticed an increase in the troubling incursion of religion in this area of public health and healthcare.
Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom
Centre For Inquiry Canada continues to develop forward-thinking relationships to provide support and assistance for Canadian and international secular humanists. On December 22, 2014, Kevin Smith (Chair of the Board of Directors) and Eric Adriaans (National Executive Director) invited Eric Thomas (President of Humanist Canada) to participate in CFI Canada’s second meeting with Ambassador Andrew Bennett of Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom (ORF).
CFI Canada and Humanist Canada (HC) share many concerns regarding the welfare and human rights of atheists, humanists and secular humanists. Eric Thomas, of HC commented: “it was evident that collective and concerted effort towards the development of “human dignity” on the international stage is a shared objective. The Humanist Canada focus on an inclusive perspective as part of its educational mandate is well served by participating with the Office of Religious Freedom led by Ambassador Bennett. We are committed to the development of new venues as active partners. The Humanist Canada Board and its national membership sincerely appreciate the opportunity to participate.
CFIC had previously met with Ambassador Bennett in the Spring of 2013 to discuss the mandate of the ORF and CFIC’s position that atheists and non-believers must be provided the same protections as religious minorities when facing persecution by religious governmental regimes. Since that meeting, CFIC has been pleased to observe Ambassador Bennett’s support of CFI’s work to support Raif Badawi at the United Nations Human Rights Council (CFI Transnational’s Michael DeDora advocacy work of June 2014) as well as his comments on the subject of freedom from religion:
