June 7, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Charity watchdogs routinely complain about the scant resources available in the United States to properly monitor the practices of charities.
But the nonprofit finance expert Dan Prives, citing a recent report in the Toronto Star, writes that oversight is much more lax north of the border in Canada.
Writing on his blog, Where Most Needed, Mr. Prives says the Canadian equivalent of the IRS Form 990 is largely devoid of important information. Charities are not required to name their top officers — or even provide their addresses.
The financial information on the reports are also difficult to decipher.
“Although all the financial information in the report is available (unlike the U.S., where only images of the form are online via GuideStar), the interface hinders rather than facilitates analysis, and comparative analysis is extremely difficult,” he writes.
But, Mr. Prives says, Canada does have one advantage in terms of charity oversight.
“Perhaps the main difference between Canada and the U.S. with regard to charity regulation is that a major newspaper in Canada will run a story about the lack of effective protection against phony charities,” he writes. “In the U.S., it’s such a given that we don’t even consider it worth mentioning.”
