What’s in the numbers? The nonprofit impact story.

Admittedly, I am not a numbers person. I work in communications, and although there is some data analysis involved, research spreadsheets and data tables aren’t what light me up. But a few key statistics that can help tell a story? I’m in!

The nonprofit sector is vast, diverse, an economic force, and employs hundreds of thousands of people who are doing vital work across Ontario and Canada. It is not an exaggeration to claim that some nonprofits are changing and saving lives every single day. And we want everyone to understand our sector’s vital impact, including governments, funders, Ontarians, and Canadians.

How do we get there? We equip ourselves with high-quality data, and stories of the people represented by the numbers.

Updated nonprofit sector numbers

Recently, Imagine Canada updated their factsheet for Ontario’s nonprofit sector, as well as other provinces and territories.

I had the pleasure of connecting with David Lasby, Principal Researcher from their team to discuss the new numbers, and here are a few highlights:

• David developed a script file that downloads current figures from Statistics Canada and updates them annually. There is no Artificial Intelligence involved in putting the factsheets together.
• The factsheets receive a lot of engagement, and consistently remain among their top publications, garnering thousands of impressions annually.
• If you compare the numbers for Ontario to the past iteration of Imagine Canada’s factsheet or even graphics ONN created, there seem to be a lot of changes. But the changes are less dramatic when you take into consideration that Statistics Canada publishes revisions and restatements of the data, and their numbers are updated up to three years after publication.  
• Data describing the characteristics of nonprofits in the factsheet did not change. This breakdown was funded in 2021 as a special project, and is unlikely to be updated in the near future.

How many nonprofits exist in Ontario? An updated number from ONN

One number that ONN uses a lot, and is not included in the factsheet, is the number of nonprofit organizations in Ontario. We have been saying 58,000 for many years, and we knew that number was dated. Before we started using a new number, 64,000, we wanted to do our due diligence, and share with the network how we arrived at it.

We’re going to talk numbers, but stay with me. In December of 2023, ONN received a complete list of all not-for-profit corporations (62,000) currently on the Ontario Business Registry.

In 2020, there were about 36,000 federal corporations. While it’s not clear how many of them are based in Ontario, overall Ontario-based corporations represented about 60 per cent of all federal corporations. So, a conservative estimate would be about 18-20,000. This number does include nonprofits who are inactive but never properly dissolved as well as municipalities, hospitals, universities, and school boards.

Imagine Canada estimates there are about 84,000 nonprofits that are non-charities Canada-wide. If we assume a proportionate number of nonprofits to Ontario’s population (about 40 per cent of Canada’s) that gives you about 33,600 nonprofits. On top of the roughly 30,000 registered charities in Ontario (as of 2023), that gets us to about 64,000.

To note, the 64,000 number does not include federal corporations that are based in Ontario, as well as unincorporated associations. 

We recognize that the 64,000 number is not exact, and in fact it’s likely a conservative number, but with the data that is available, we feel confident in using it.

Updating ONN’s communications to reflect new sector data

ONN uses our own sector-wide data, alongside Imagine’s data, to advance policy priorities and advocate for decent work, funding reform, anti-privatization, and much more.

Moving forward, we will be using these new numbers, and working to update web pages and resources to reflect the changes. Please bear with us while we make these changes, and note that we will not be editing existing submissions or reports but focus on using the updated data in newly developed content. 

We encourage all nonprofits to use available sector data to demand a more equitable, greener, inclusive future for our sector’s workers, and the communities we serve.