How to Choose a Charity to Name in Your Will

A 62-year-old executive in Halifax had narrowed her charitable list down to two organisations — the local hospice that had cared for her father, and a national wildlife organisation she had supported quietly for two decades. When she pulled up both on the CRA Charities Listings, she found that one had merged into a larger umbrella in 2023 and the other had changed its legal name twice in five years. The bequest clause she ultimately drafted accommodated both shifts in advance.

This article is the practical framework most Canadians don't realise exists for picking a charity to name in a will. Four filters do most of the work — the cause, the registration, the financial health, and the longevity. A fifth question — how to write the bequest so it survives changes to the charity itself — finishes the job. For the broader tax mechanics of bequests, our estate planning pillar sits alongside this guide.

Filter 1: The cause #

Choosing a cause is the only part of the process that's genuinely personal. The other four filters are technical. There's no normative answer to which cause matters most, but two patterns help when nothing obvious stands out.

Where have you given during your lifetime? Most Canadians who already donate have a track record across two or three causes. Health-care (hospitals, hospice, disease-specific research), faith communities, education (universities, scholarship funds, public-school foundations), animal welfare, and environmental conservation are the most common Canadian giving destinations. The lifetime track record often points clearly at the cause that fits.

What problem do you wish had been solved sooner? Personal experience often clarifies a cause more than abstract preference does. A family member who needed mental-health support that didn't arrive. A neighbourhood library that closed. A medical condition that doesn't have a major research foundation. The bequest can be the contribution that, in retrospect, you wish someone had made for you.

Either pattern points at a cause. From there, the next four filters narrow the field to a specific organisation.

Filter 2: Registration #

Canadian tax law draws a hard line between registered charities and other not-for-profits. Only gifts to registered charities and other "qualified donees" produce the donation credit that reduces the tax owing on the deceased's final return.^[2]

The CRA Charities Listings is the authoritative public registry.^[1] Searching by name returns:

• The current legal name of the charity
• The BN/Registration number (in the format NNNNNNNNN RR NNNN)
• The charity's mailing address
• The category of work (welfare, health, education, religion, benefit to community)
• All T3010 information returns filed in recent years
• Status — registered, suspended, revoked, annulled

Three practices worth doing. First, copy the legal name exactly as it appears on the listing into your will — including capitalisation and any "Foundation" or "Society" suffix. Second, include the registration number in the will text alongside the name (e.g. "[full registered legal name] (BN [registration number])"). Third, save a screenshot or PDF of the listing in the same folder as your will, so that the executor has an unambiguous reference even if the charity changes its public branding before your death.

What doesn't qualify. Local sports clubs, professional associations, alumni associations, political parties, and most service clubs are not registered charities, even if they do legitimate community work. Crowdfunded relief efforts and informal community groups are not qualified donees regardless of how worthy the cause. A bequest to any of these is legally valid but does not generate the donation tax credit.

Filter 3: Financial health #

Every registered Canadian charity files an annual T3010 information return with the CRA, and the filing is published on the Charities Listings within roughly twelve months of the charity's fiscal year-end.^[1]

The four numbers worth reading:

• Total revenue — gives a sense of scale. A charity with $400,000 in annual revenue runs on a thinner cushion than one with $40 million.
• Total expenditures — should be in the same order of magnitude as revenue across a multi-year average. Persistent large gaps in either direction (chronic deficits or chronic surpluses) warrant a closer look.
• Spending on charitable activities vs. management/general administration vs. fundraising — the program-spending ratio. As a rough benchmark, an operating charity that spends 75%+ of its budget on charitable activities is in good shape, though capital-intensive sectors (medical research, heritage, museum) often legitimately spend more on infrastructure.
• Compensation disclosure — the T3010 includes salary bands for the highest-paid employees. A charity with five staff earning $250,000+ on a $4 million budget is a different organisation from one with a $4 million budget and a $90,000 executive director.

What the numbers don't capture. Effectiveness — whether the charity actually moves the needle on its cause — is harder to read from a T3010. For that, third-party accreditors like Imagine Canada's Standards Program offer a quality signal,^[5] and donor-research organisations publish detailed reviews of charities by sector.

Filter 4: Longevity #

A will may sit for decades between signing and execution. Charities don't always last that long. The 2010s and 2020s saw a wave of mergers, name changes, and wind-ups across the Canadian charitable sector — driven by funder consolidation, pandemic financial pressure, and demographic shifts in donor bases.

Two checks for longevity:

• Age of the charity. Older charities have generally weathered more cycles. A 50-year-old charity is more likely to exist in 20 years than a 5-year-old one. The "year of registration" on the T3010 gives a baseline. (Some sector exceptions exist: a 5-year-old hospice foundation tied to a public hospital is anchored to an institution with much longer expected life than the foundation alone suggests.)
• Reserves and endowment. A charity with multi-year operating reserves and a significant endowment is less likely to wind down quickly. Reserves are visible in the T3010 net assets figure.

None of this is predictive. Established institutions still close. The practical response is the next section.

How to write the bequest so it survives changes #

Even with all four filters applied, the charity you name today may not exist in the same form when your estate is administered. Three drafting practices buffer against that.

Name a backup charity. "I give $X to Charity A (BN ABCDEFGHI RR0001), or if Charity A no longer exists or has materially changed its purpose, to Charity B (BN JKLMNOPQR RR0001)." A clean backup clause avoids the cy-près application that would otherwise be required if the original charity disappears.

Authorise executor substitution. "If neither named charity is available, my executor may direct the gift to a registered Canadian charity whose purpose most closely resembles [specified cause]." This grants the executor explicit substitution authority within bounded discretion.

Use a donor-advised fund or community foundation. Naming a donor-advised fund at a Canadian community foundation as the bequest recipient is essentially indirection — the fund persists through any change in the operating charities it ultimately grants to.^[4] The donor's wishes regarding which causes to support are recorded with the fund separately from the will, and can be updated during the donor's lifetime.

When to involve a planned-giving officer #

Most large Canadian charities (university advancement offices, hospital foundations, large national charities) have a planned-giving department whose job includes guiding prospective donors through bequest decisions. The conversation costs nothing and is bound by professional confidentiality norms.

Two questions worth asking a planned-giving officer:

• "What's the typical bequest size you receive, and how does the charity use it — operating budget, endowment, restricted purpose?" This clarifies whether your contemplated gift would be material to the charity's mission or whether a different gift type (named scholarship, capital project, endowment) might do more.
• "Is there a draft bequest clause you recommend?" Major Canadian charities publish suggested bequest wording with the correct registered name and registration number. Copying that wording into your will (or having your lawyer adapt it) reduces the risk of administrative complications.

What we focus on at It's Simple Will #

Our will questionnaire supports charitable bequests as a structured option. The questionnaire walks you through verifying the charity's registration with the CRA Charities Listings, choosing between a specific dollar amount and a percentage of the residue, and adding a backup clause.

If you're still narrowing down causes, the charitable bequest calculator lets you model how a percentage gift would scale at different estate sizes. Our charitable bequest formats page covers the structural choices — specific gift, percentage, residual — and our charity guide wizard is built for donors who know they want to give but haven't picked a charity yet.

Picking the cause is the hard part. The rest is paperwork.