Blog 1 - Heart and Stroke Foundation - Carolyn Gillette

The Heart and Stroke Foundation is an organization that has been dedicated to educating and researching heart disease and stroke since 1952. They are involved in educating students and adults about prevention through lifestyle changes and nutrition and they hold several events to raise awareness about the disease and its prevalence.

According to the CRA the Heart and Stroke Foundation receives the majority of their funding through donations. Donations account for 89% of their revenue with both government grants and donations from other charities accounting for 2% each. In 2017, the organization gained $138,810,000 in overall revenue and used $136,780,000 of that money for expenses.

As was explained on their website, for every dollar that the Heart and Stroke Foundation uses, 56 cents goes directly towards research and education. Their financial overhead is made up of fundraising costs (41 cents on the dollar) and administrative costs (only 3 cents for every dollar). The Heart and Stroke Foundation provides this information for both donators and investors in large font and easy to understand terms on their donation page.

Charity Intelligence reported that the Heart and Stroke Foundation had a high overhead level for a charitable organization. Though I would agree that 53% of spending is high for a charity, as was talked about in their review, the organization is highly transparent when it comes to their revenue and expenses on their website. I think that although half of the organization’s funding goes towards programming, only 3% of that is for administration costs and the majority of the organization’s donations go directly back to the cause and its fundraising. The foundation also provides $31, 506 worth of grants to other charities with similar goals. 

I think that one aspect of the charity’s effectiveness that should be considered is which programs the Heart and Stroke Foundation are spending their overhead on. They quoted 41% of their funding goes towards programming and educational programs but I wonder if that includes investor events or just public ones. As long as the fundraising costs are used towards events such as the Big Bike event or the Jump Rope for Heart, I believe their overhead was used efficiently. In their annual report for 2017, the Heart and Stroke Foundation closed down two offices. This is another interesting fact, as closing down these offices would have decreased their overhead costs and the reason for this could give more insight into their overhead efficiency.

Overall I think that the Heart and Stroke Foundation does spend a lot of money on overhead expenses, but they are generally quite transparent about it on their website. I think donating to any charity requires extensive research into where donor’s money is actually being spent but I appreciated the honesty about their overhead and their expenditures. I think that the decision as to whether the organization has an acceptable amount of overhead or not, is ultimately left up to the donator to decide.