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business elite canada
H
june 2014
june 2014
H
business elite canada
11
or approaching people for
donations, often to give to
charities of which they have
never heard of before. Bea-
ton acknowledges this is a
daily dilemma that interferes
with the free spirit of giving
to a worthy charity.
“We’ve all been ap-
proached at the cash register
at some point while making a
purchase to give to a charity
that we often haven’t heard
of, and must make a quick de-
cision about giving, for which
there will be no way to receive
any tax benefit – although us-
ers of course feel good about
donating something. This hap-
pened to me one time, and I
saw it as a great opportunity
to talk about the ChangeIt
program to the cashier. She
was very intrigued by it, and
told me that she disliked ask-
ing people and they didn’t
like being asked. This is a clas-
sic example that most North
Americans can relate to.”
On the tax side of things,
there is a real benefit in the
ChangeIt system for donors
and charities.
The 2013 Polaris study also
indicated that 71 per cent of
Canadians said they donated
money to charity; however
there was an alarming statis-
tic published from the Cana-
da Revenue Agency suggest-
ing that less than 24 per cent
of Canadians file charitable
donations as part of their an-
nual tax return process.
“For me, there’s a mas-
sive gap which asks, ‘Are Ca-
nadians being as financially
responsible as they should be
when they make charitable
donations?’ A lot of people
may give a dollar here or there
at a cash register to a charity
they don’t even know about,
you give it, but you never get
tax benefit for it, other than
the heartstring moment of
feeling good at the time,” said
Kitchen.
Addressing this issue,
ChangeIt is in alignment with
the Canadian Governor Gen-
eral’s campaign to encourage
Canadians to give even the
smallest amount of time or
money to charity. The cam-
paign announced last year,
called My Giving Moment,
and was established to help
to address the same alarming
statistic that the number of
Canadians who are claiming
charitable giving on their tax-
es has been dropping steadily
each year to the point where
it is at a low of less than 24
per cent.
“Our program gets right to
the heart of this problem and
deals with the fact that people
can give the small amounts of
money, but because we issue
or aide through the charities
each of our donors is able to
get the tax receipts from each
of the charities that they sup-
port through our program.
Through those tax receipts
