Canada Revenue Agency has just announced a new feature on their online Charity search function. The feature, “Charity Quick View” now displays a summary of the Registered Charity Information Return. The Registered Charity Information Return is filed by Registered Charities every year and provides information to Canada Revenue Agency such as the donations received, expenses made and fundraising activities of the Charity over the past year.
Canada Revenue Agency has had the Basic Search feature on their website for some time now so that people can conduct their own searches to check the registration status of a charity. The inclusion of the additional information available to the public is a helpful feature for people to use when making decisions regarding where they would like to make their charitable donations. Anyone can now review the revenue and expenses of a particular charity and where the funds were obtained and spent.
For those Registered Charities that are concerned about the amount of information they provide with the T3010 Information Return, the CRA has censored some of the information so confidential details (including, but not limited to, Director’s names, addresses and birth dates) are not included in the information available online.