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My Charity of Choice – Woodgreen’s Homeward Bound Program

Guest — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Thanks to The Blunt Bean Counter for organizing the Bloggers For Charity initiative. All blogs combined, we raised an impressive $12,575! Special thanks to Lisa, who donated $200 to Woodgreen’s Homeward Bound Program to win the Blogger for a Day here at Canadian Finance Blog!

I am so happy to support the Canadian Finance Blog’s, Bloggers for Charity project. I think this is a great way to raise money for charity and I am glad I have the chance to write this blog posting. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about a wonderful not-for-profit organization in Toronto and corporate volunteer days.

I work at a Toronto-based company and last summer the owners of my company decided to have a Charity Day. We were looking for a volunteer opportunity that would allow every employee to donate a full-day to an organization. After evaluating many different organizations, we decided to volunteer with Woodgreen Community Services. Woodgreen is a Toronto-based organization that serves 37,000 people a year by providing programs to address housing, employment, health and wellness and many other societal issues. For a more complete list of how Woodgreen helps the community visit their website.

We volunteered with Woodgreen’s Homeward Bound program which helps single mothers and their children move from homelessness and poverty to successful careers and self-sufficiency. Unique in Canada, Homeward Bound is a 4-year job-readiness program featuring: affordable housing; free, quality child care; training and post-secondary education in a marketable skill; personal development support; mental health and recreational services for children; and a guaranteed, family-sustaining career opportunity at the end of the program. The key component of the program is that the mother gets to concentrate on her education and career knowing she has child care for her children, a safe place to stay and once the program ends, she will hopefully be self-sufficient.

For one day, we helped prepare a new Homeward Bound residence for occupancy by single mothers and their children. We assembled furniture, cleaned floors and bathrooms, put slipcovers on sofas, and worked together so that people we had never met could have a new home and a fresh start. The people at Woodgreen were extremely well-prepared and organized. They told us all about the Homeward Bound program and we could not have found a better volunteer experience for our group and all the employees found this day a rewarding experience.

I think our corporate volunteer day was successful for Woodgreen, in that we were able to help them get their new building ready, but it was also a big win for our company. On volunteer day I got to work with people that I don’t work with on a day-to-day basis, and we got to work together on a project that had nothing in common with what any of us do at work. We were all a little out of our element and we all got to see one another working hard at tasks that weren’t part of our normal. I was touched by the enthusiasm my colleagues had for every job that needed to be done that day. I never thought I would see the owners of the company sweeping floors with such zeal, and I’m so glad I did. I know in corporate-speak we could simply call all this team building, and I think we did come out of the day with stronger sense of team, but I also came out of our volunteer day feeling proud of my colleagues and good about the work that we did and, almost 5 months later, I am still really thankful that the company gave us a day to donate our time so we could each enjoy the experience of being charitable.

If you would like to make a donation to Woodgreen, please visit this link http://www.woodgreen.org/GetInvolved/Donate.aspx

By: Lisa

My Charity of Choice – Woodgreen’s Homeward Bound Program originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on January 17, 2012.

Bloggers For Charity

Robb Engen — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:00:29 +0000

Shortly before my wife was diagnosed with MS, she had participated in the local MS Walk fundraiser with a group from work. I donated $100 to her team, and gave myself a nice pat on the back for supporting a great cause.

The next year I took a different approach after learning about my wife’s diagnosis. Instead of contributing a token amount to the fundraiser, I went out to make a difference. So I started my own team and recruited my friends, family, and co-workers to join me. I spoke at a corporate breakfast club to help raise awareness for the event. And when it was all said and done, our team ended up raising nearly $12,000.

Since then, I’ve always felt that donating to charity can make more of an impact when you get as many people as possible to unite for the cause.

So when Mark Goodfield, from The Blunt Bean Counter, approached me with a unique idea to help raise money for charities using our blogs as a platform, I jumped at the opportunity to participate.

Bloggers for Charity

Bensimon Byrne, a client at Mark’s accounting firm, and a very successful advertising agency, deserves recognition for raising almost $100,000 for the United Way over the last four years. Every November they have a variety of events to raise money on behalf of the United Way, including an auction where friends, clients and suppliers of the firm donate services or goods that are then auctioned off.

This year, Mark is auctioning off a free guest post on his blog and has challenged other Canadian bloggers do the same thing in order to raise money for this great cause. Mark kicked off the Bloggers for Charity contest yesterday on his blog, and then called upon 5 of the top personal finance blogs in Canada, including Canadian Finance Blog, to join the effort.

Any blogger should feel free to join the effort (this initiative is not limited to financial bloggers) whether nominated or not and encourage their blogger contacts to join the Bloggers for Charity initiative.

The Contest and Rules

I’m sure there are many Canadian Finance Blog readers who have writing aspirations without a proper outlet to express their opinion (other than their Facebook page). If you are interested in guest posting right here on Canadian Finance Blog, please contact us here along with your bid.

Here are the contest rules:

1. Each blogger will auction off the opportunity to write a guest post on their blog.

2. All bids will be made in confidence to the blogger’s email account. The blogger at their discretion can email back bidders the current top bid or note the amount of the leading bid on their blog to encourage bidding.

3. The auction will close on December 16, 2011. The blogger will notify the winning bidder by email.

4. The winning bidder will be required to send the blogger a copy of a donation receipt, dated between December 17th and December 31st (personal information can be blacked-out) to confirm the donation has been made. (This donation will be tax deductible to the winning bidder as long as the donation is made to a registered charity).

5. For unanimity amongst bloggers, it is suggested that January 17, 2012 be the date all the Blogger for a Day guest posts are published.

6. The winner can write a post on any topic (subject to approval by the particular blogger), although in the spirit of the contest, it would be great if the winning bidder wrote about a charity or charitable experience, but that is not a requirement. The only rule is that the guest post cannot be a marketing piece. However, at the bottom of their post, the guest blogger can provide their name, name of their company and a brief description of their company and its products. Alternatively, the guest blogger can remain anonymous.

7. All bloggers who participate are asked to email Lynda at Lynda@cunninghamca.com to note their participation and then contact Lynda with their winning bid so that Mark can tally the donations received. All individual donation totals will be kept confidential.

Bloggers, please take this opportunity to join the Bloggers for Charity project and extend this offer to your readers.

Readers, here’s your chance to guest post on Canadian Finance Blog and support your favourite charity while you’re at it.

Bloggers For Charity originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on November 22, 2011.

Investing Your Charitable Donations Credit

Tom Drake — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:00:01 +0000

I was asked a question about my charitable donations post from last week. The question was, instead of the $200 in my example, what if he donated say $1,000 a year… would he be better off getting the credit each year and investing it?

For starters, lets break down the tax credit he would receive, each year or once at the end of 6 years. If you claimed your charitable donation each year you would get $262 back each year come tax time. If you saved up the receipts and filed 6 years together you would have $1,712.

If he was to receive his $262 credit each year and put it into an investment making 5% he would have $1,782, a slight increase over the $1,712 he would receive by saving up the receipts for 6 years. However, if the money went into a savings account or GIC, making 2.5%, he would only have $1,674. With either scenario, the interest earned would also be taxable unless held inside a TFSA or RRSP.

The numbers do work out better if you are fortunate enough to be able to donate $2,000 a year. At that amount, investing the $552 credit each year into a savings account or GIC at 2.5% would give you $3,526, a $74 increase over the $3,452 you would receive by claiming after 6 years. These savings are not huge, but at least you won’t have to hold onto your receipts!

Investing Your Charitable Donations Credit originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on February 19, 2009.

Charitable Donations

Tom Drake — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:22:41 +0000

By saving your receipts you can optimize the tax credit you receive on charitable donations you make to registered charities. You do however, need to have a dependable filing system since you’ll need to hold on to your receipts for a few years.

The first $200 of charitable donations you claim are eligible for a 15% federal tax credit and any amount over that receives a 29% federal tax credit. Where you have some room to make this work to your advantage, without donating more than you would have, is that you do not need to claim your donations in the current year as you can claim up to 5 years later.

So let’s say your total donations in a year are $200. If you claim this amount each year, it would give you a $30 tax credit every year totaling $180 over 6 years. If you were to save all your receipts and file on the 6th year, you would be able to claim $1,200. This would provide a tax credit of $320, $30 on the first $200 and $290 on the remaining $1,000. In this example, by holding your receipts for 6 years, you get an extra $140 back on the total donations. You could max this out a bit more by making extra donations before December 31st of the final year, possibly with the donations you would have made in the following year.

Charitable Donations originally appeared on Canadian Finance Blog on February 11, 2009.