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The recently published National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations (NSNVO) reports that there were over 161,000 registered charities and nonprofit organizations in Canada in 2003, the most current year for which data are available. This NSNVO data are also available by province and territory:

Nonprofit and voluntary organizations, by province or territory, Canada, 2003

Source: Cornerstones of community : highlights of the National Survey of Nonprofit and Voluntary Organizations : 2003 revised / [Michael Hall ... et al.]. [Rev. ed.]. Ottawa : Statistics Canada, Small Business and Special Surveys Division, 2005.

Detailed regional reports are also available from the NSNVO, but the survey does not report data on the number of nonprofit and voluntary organizations below the provincial/territorial level.

However, it is possible to estimate the number of charities in your local area. Approximately half of the nonprofit and voluntary organizations reported in the NSNVO are registered charities (80,000). In Canada, all registered charities are regulated through the Canada Revenue Agency; this includes public charities, and public and private foundations respectively. Its Charities Directorate maintains information and regulations pertaining to charitable status as well as a searchable database for all Canadian registered charities based on T3010 tax return data which is reported annually. The database can be searched by province, city or by postal code for a precisely defined regional catchment.

The NSNVO report and a wide variety of statistical resources on the giving and volunteering of Canadians and the organizations where they work are available in the Imagine Canada — John Hodgson Library catalogue. There, you can look for records using keywords such as Statistics. If a title is marked below with "Full Text Available", you can view or download the whole document immediately. Over 80% of our current titles are available in electronic, full text formats (free). The library catalogue is updated monthly.

Please see also the library's National Survey Literature Collection for a searchable database of NSNVO materials and other national statistics and research.

For statistics on the contribution of individual Canadians to Canadia's charitable and voluntary sector, please see the Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating 2004 (CSGVP) and the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating 2000 (NSGVP); look for the reports and provincial fact sheets on http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/

The best source for researching foundations in Canada is Imagine Canada's annual Canadian Directory of Foundations and Corporations. Presently in its 20th edition, the Directory indexes over 3,100 foundations and may be searched by name, subject, geographic location, grant size, by size of foundation (asset size), etc. The Directory is available for sale or by subscription to the online edition.

last update 11/21/2008