The Most-Read Stories in 2023
In 2023, the PANL Perspectives website and newsletter and the MPNL website published approximately 100 webpages with articles and reports. Below are the most popular stories. Featuring work by faculty, alumni, students, and practitioners in the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, PANL Perspectives creates and curates evidence-based information from research, reports and experts around the world.
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#1) Analyses about Churches and Volunteers
Don McRae
Don McRae is a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. For more than a decade, he’s studied trends in our sector by analyzing the revocations of charitable status that are published in the Canada Gazette, digging deeper into trends by analyzing data from annual charity tax returns (T3010s) and other sources — and looking at newly registered charities to see what replaced the revoked ones. His “Charity Revocations” series was widely read, with Church Closures and the Loss of Community Social Capital being our most-read story of 2023. Volunteer-Supporting Charities Are Closing at Alarming Rates was also in the top 10.
#2) The Power of Women in Philanthropy
Jo-Anne Ryan
Our webinar and webpage, “The Power of Women in Philanthropy” Recording, Reports & Resources, featured a TD report by Jo-Anne Ryan (Vice President of Philanthropic Advisory Services at TD Wealth and Executive Director of the Private Giving Foundation): Trust and Transformation – Canadian Women and Philanthropy. The event also featured Jeannie Infante Sager (Director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy), and Linsey Sherman-Zekulin (a lawyer and nonprofit leader who co-founded Ottawa-based Happy Roots Foundation).
#3) How to Start a Nonprofit
As part of their final capstone in the MPNL program, Kira McDermid and Emma Wood (both now alumni) created How to Start a Nonprofit in Canada: Everything You Need to Know. Released by the Muttart Foundation, the free report offers specifics for each province and territory and at the federal level, explaining the steps required during the first year of an organization’s existence. Their sources included government and academic research, as well as interviews with four recent founders of organizations.
#4) Anything about Trends
Keith Sjögren
Keith Sjögren, Dr. Susan Phillips, and others looked at how things have changed in charitable giving and philanthropy in Canada and the US. Mega-donors have become much more mega for example. Diversity, inclusion, equity and justice became prominent concerns. Declines in donations and volunteering continued. Almost every story about trends in our sector was widely read:
- Five Trends in 2023
- Philanthropy Trends: Is Canadian Philanthropy Distinct from That in the US?
- Drivers of Philanthropy in 2023
#5) Q&A with CEO Sam Watts
The goal at PANL Perspectives is to bridge academic scholarship with professional practice and public policy — making research accessible to wider audiences. People also need timely, evidence-based information and perspectives from leaders in our sector — and Sam Watts is one such leader. The question-and-answer (Q&A) with him focused on a Montreal organization that works with people experiencing homelessness and precarity: “Hunger in Canada isn’t the problem. We have more than enough food to feed people.”
#6) Data Discoveries
Cathy Barr
Our “Data Discoveries” page contains stories and Q&As with data experts, as well as free resources that might interest scholars and practitioners in our sector. One of the widely read pieces in 2023 was a Q&A with Cathy Barr, VP of Research and Strategic Relationships for Imagine Canada: “Statistics Canada is going to do another full-scale survey of charities and nonprofits — and they haven’t done that since 2003.”
Annual Data Summit: A Reflection on a Year of Insights, an event by CICP-PCPOB, also drew attention. The Charity Insights Canada Project (CICP) / Projet Canada perspectives des organismes de bienfaisance (PCPOB) is an ambitious initiative that will ensure that policymakers, practitioners, researchers and the general public have information about the charitable sector in Canada. Through weekly surveys and reports, and monthly policy briefs, CICP-PCPOB offers an overview of the trends, challenges, and opportunities facing the sector.
#7) Anything about Donor-Advised Funds
Keith Sjögren, a consultant and researcher on wealth and financial services, as well as Chair of the MPNL Advisory Council, wrote two articles about donor-advised funds (DAFs) that were some of the most-read of the past year: Donor-Advised Funds: 2023 Outlook and A Report about Donor-Advised Funds.
#8) “Unfunded: Black Communities Overlooked by Canadian Philanthropy” Report
Prepared by the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities, as well as Carleton University’s PhD student Fahad Ahmad and MPNL alumna Rachel Pereira, the Unfunded report provides the first in-depth examination of the relationship between Canadian philanthropy and Black communities. The report was released three years ago, and the webpage is still one of the most visited.
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Tuesday, January 2, 2024 in News & Events
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