Oilers Community Foundation given C+ charitability grade

Sport team’s charities graded The Oilers got a C+ for how they give back and a lack of transparency. CTV Edmonton’s Dan Grummett has more.

A report that gave the Edmonton Oilers a C+ grade for charitability has one piece of advice for donors of any Canadian professional sports teams: “Keep your stick on the ice and your wallet in your pocket.”

The Charity Intelligence (CI) review examined eight charities run by the country’s professional sports teams: six NHL teams, the Jays Care Foundation, and the Maple Leafe Sports and Entertainment Foundation (representing the Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors, and the Toronto FC).

Kate Bahen, CI’s managing director, said each grade is the result of the foundation’s performance in four areas: how accountable it is to its donors; its financial transparency; how it spends and saves money; and the number of cents for every dollar it spends on the cause.

She said while Alberta is a leading example of how charities should be run, the Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation (EOCF) is less so.

“Don’t get confused about being an Edmonton Oilers fan and being an Edmonton Oilers donor,” the managing director advised.

Since its foundation in 2001, the EOCF reports having contributed over $33 million to some 2,700 charitable groups in northern Alberta.

In the CI’s ranking, the Oilers foundation received the third-most donations from Canadians in 2017, totaling about $7 million. Most of this money, 65 per cent, is sourced through 50/50 draws. The rest comes from public donations and sponsorships.

But despite having one of the largest revenue bases, Bahen said the EOCF lags “pretty much across the board.”

A more detailed report by CI notes the EOCF has funding reserves of $4.5 million, which could cover its annual grants and program costs for a little over a year. For example, in 2017, the Oilers foundation gave out $3.6 million on charity programs and grants.

While the spent-saved ratio puts EOCF on the poorer end of the spectrum, by CI’s standards, it does mean the foundation is good at dispersing the money it raises.

“In hockey lingo, it’s a playmaker, not a puck hog,” said Bahen.

However, she criticized how the team’s foundation spends its money.

According to CI, 63 cents of every dollar donated to the EOCF in 2017 went to its programs—putting it just two cents short of CI’s ideal range for overhead spending. The agency likes to see charities give between 65 and 95 cents of every dollar back to the community. In the two prior years, the EOCF was spending less than 50 cents for every dollar on programs.

Its website also lacks the foundation’s audited financial statements, prompting Bahen to call it a “black book.”

“They are not financially transparent. That’s their choice. And as a donor, it’s also your choice,”Bahen said.

In response to CI’s reports, Canada’s NHL teams released a joint statement confirming how much each team reinvested in the 2017-18 fiscal year.

The statement said the NHL foundations share their financial statements with the Canada Revenue Agency and hire independent financial audits, the results of which are shared with the relative boards.

Only the Maple Leafs’ Foundation makes its statements public. The Calgary Flames Foundation provided theirs upon request. A Freedom of Information Request is needed to see the others.

In response to NHL teams’ statement, Bahen said, “The next time they ask you to make a donation or support their causes, just remember, they want to run a closed-book shop. And that’s fine. It’s not illegal. No charity is required to provide its audited financial statements. But when you are a charity of this size and of this public profile in the community, donors have the right, I believe, to know how their support is spent.”

Comparatively, the Calgary Flames Foundation (CFF) was what Bahen calls a “puck hog,” keeping nearly $8 million in reserve funds while spending less than $2 million in 2017. When the EOCF was spending 63 cents per dollar last year, the CFF spent just 30 cents per dollar on charitable programs. Bahen criticized the team for running expensive fundraisers that cost almost as much as they raise.

Only MLSE Foundation breached the CI’s reasonable spending threshold, spending 79 per cent on community programs.

As for other local charities, Bahen recommends looking at CI’s report on the Edmonton Food Bank “to see what excellence looks like.”

The food bank spent 87 cents of every dollar in 2015, and 95 cents of every dollar on charitable programs in 2016.

With files from Dan Grummett