Churches and other charitable organizations across Canada are awaiting confirmation on a proposed extension to the Canada Revenue Agency’s annual deadline for charitable donation from Dec. 31, 2024 to Feb. 28, 2025. Due to the Canada Post strike which interrupted mail delivery from Nov. 15 until the federal government ordered workers back to their jobs Dec. 16, many organizations have been unable to receive cheques by mail or to send out their customary end-of-year appeals for donations.
In a Dec. 30 news release, the federal government announced it intended to amend the Income Tax Act to extend the deadline for Canadians to make charitable donations which they could report on their 2024 taxes into the new year. The legislation making that official would be introduced after Parliament returned from its winter break, it said. The proposal was aimed at providing donors with more time to ensure their contributions were received and processed, incentivizing them to donate if they had been unable to during the mail strike.
Normally, Parliament would have resumed on the first Monday in February after its winter break, but when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Jan. 8 his intention to step down, he also said Parliament would be prorogued until March 24. This has led to uncertainty in the nonprofit community about whether and when the deadline will be extended.
In a Jan 9 article, The Globe and Mail reported a spokesperson from the Department of Finance confirmed in an email that individuals would be able to report those donations on their taxes for either 2024 or 2025.
Deborah Barretto, director of Resources for Mission, the Anglican Church of Canada’s fundraising department, tells the Anglican Journal the church is among the charities affected. Due to the strike, the appeal letters for Giving With Grace, the church’s end-of-year fundraising drive, as well as the Anglican Journal’s annual appeal for donations did not make it to their destinations across most of the country until late December at the earliest, she says. And many of the church’s donors give primarily by mailed-in cheques, many of which are only now beginning to arrive as Canada Post works through the backlog of mail which accumulated during the strike.
In a Jan. 8 interview, Barretto said the church had so far received only $30,000 in response to Giving with Grace, as compared with the $75,000 donated in 2023, with no cheques marked for the Anglican Journal. (However, shortly afterward, she emailed the Journal to say that a large stack of mail had just arrived, including additional Giving with Grace and Anglican Journal donations.)
Carolyn Cummins, director of fundraising and supporter relations for the Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund (PWRDF), the Anglican Church of Canada’s global charity arm, says PWRDF saw a 20 to 25 per cent drop in donations during the strike as compared to the same period previous years. PWRDF is still receiving backlog mail as well, however, she says, so things may still improve.
“We’re still hopeful. And we are really grateful to the generous donors who did still put a cheque in the mail and hope for the best, maybe with a little prayer as they put it in that mailbox.”
Still, Amal Attia, the General Synod’s treasurer, says the national church’s broader finances have not been disrupted. The bulk of its annual revenue comes from proportional giving from the dioceses, money which is transferred electronically to the national church, and the dioceses have largely been meeting their targets so far. Likewise, she says, revenue from online book sales has been high lately, and this will go into the communications budget, helping to make up for any shortfall in Anglican Journal donations.
Nicole Danesi is senior manager of strategic communications and brand for Canada Helps, a nonprofit that processes donations and provides fundraising services for 86,000 charities across the country. Like the church, many of those charities depend on November and December as the largest charitable giving period of the year. About 40 per cent of the donations the charity processes through its online giving platform come in during those two months, with a quarter of that arriving in the last three days of the year, she says. Charities vary in how much of their funding comes in through online, in-person or mail-in donations, she says, but Canada Helps commissioned an Ipsos poll in December which revealed that of those who usually donated to charity via mail, 43 per cent were not planning to send in donations online by the end of the year, despite the Canada Post strike.
Danesi says the deadline extension is a smart, nonpartisan move which would benefit a wide range of Canadians, as well as the entire charitable sector. However, Canada Helps is advising its partner charities not to promise donors the deadline will be extended until the government announces it. Danesi says this is the safest policy to avoid giving out wrong information.
Meanwhile, Bernadette Johnson, a senior advisor on policy and advocacy for nonprofit resource, research and support charity Imagine Canada, says she and her organization are confident the deadline extension will be honoured. Parliament has made this move twice before, extending the deadline for donations in the 1997 financial year after a similar postal strike and again to incentivize donations to relief efforts for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Both times, the bills were passed well after their extended deadlines and applied retroactively to any charitable donations made before the chosen dates, says Johnson. And since, as Danesi pointed out, this move would be simple and beneficial for any political party to put through, there is no obstacle to it passing again.
“This has been successful before. We don’t have any reason to think that it’s not going to be successful again. It’s a good-news story.”
Each of the sources interviewed for this story expressed hope that donors would remember the importance of the causes they normally give to at years’ end and would find the generosity to support their causes whether the deadline is extended or not. The research does not exist, said Danesi, to say conclusively how much extending the deadline for tax receipts would affect Canadians’ likelihood to donate, but there are more reasons than the tax credit to give.
“Even though we know tax receipts are an added incentive, I think the actual support and the help is the reason why they give,” she says.
The Anglican Journal approached the Canada Revenue Agency for comment but did not receive a reply before this story was published.
