The Canadian Charities Listings

From the Hill Library:

Questions on companies or industries located outside of the U.S. are always challenging, even in those best-case scenarios where everything is in English. While we are pretty familiar with sources of information in the U.S., we are often starting from scratch when looking into foreign sources.

And so we were happy to find a reliable source for nonprofit filings in Canada. Here in the U.S. we generally look to the GuideStar database or the National Center for Charitable Statistics for access to nonprofits' 990 filings. In Canada it's the Canada Revenue Agency that maintains a list of registered charities, called the Charities Listings. This database allows people to confirm that an organization is a registered charity, and also provides access to the Registered Charity Information Return, which, like the 990 form in the U.S., provides information on a charity's activities and finances.

Charities and nonprofits play a big part in the Canadian economy, with 7.8% of the GDP and 10.5% of the labor force, according to Imagine Canada, and so it's nice to have a resource that provides the official filings of these organizations. The Canada Revenue Agency is now just one more reason why we love Canada.
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In the advanced search section, you can find what charities are registered in Canada that are based in other countries. There are 24 US firms that are registered charities in Canada, according to the database.