Dear ,

Happy New Year! I hope that 2024 is off to a smooth and productive start. It’s been a while since the CAGP Board of Directors has provided an update to our membership. A lot has been going on and we are happy to share some highlights with you as we make a fresh start in a new year.

You’ve previously been made aware that the CAGP National Board and staff are in the midst of strategic planning. We believe that taking the necessary time to reflect and deliberate on our organization’s purpose, opportunities, capacity is important and given that, the discussions are taking longer than anticipated – more on that later. Of course, much of our good work simply continues so in the meantime, we are framing this report around the pillars within CAGP’s last strategic plan for 2019-2023.

Promote Charitable Gift Planning

The Will Power campaign, a collaboration with the CAGP Foundation, continues to be an incredibly exciting initiative through which we work towards our mission of strengthening strategic charitable gift planning in Canada. The 2023-24 campaign is currently underway, and recruitment 2024-25 charity partners is in full swing. While the campaign is entering its fifth year, earlier this year we released some statistics that showed the campaign’s impact after just three years:  2.7 million Canadians are now considering leaving a gift in their Will because of the Will Power campaign, and 8% of Canadians have already done so. You may recall that at the time of the campaign’s launch in 2019, benchmarking showed that just 5% of Canadians were doing so, which led us to set a 10-year campaign goal of moving that bar to 8.5%. The progress we’ve seen in such a short timeframe has led us to adjust that 10-year goal to 13%; reaching that target would mean pretty staggering results: $58 billion in new money to support charities’ good work.

To say that we are immensely proud and excited about Will Power would be a serious understatement. If your charity is not already a Will Power member, or if you are a professional advisor but not part of the campaign, we strongly encourage you to consider joining and being part of this exciting journey that is truly transformative for philanthropy in Canada. The Will Power team would be happy to connect with you about that.

Build and Disseminate Knowledge

Our education program, delivered in partnership with the CAGP Foundation, remains as cornerstone work for our organization. In 2023 we continued to find our place in a post-COVID world, which presented challenges such as fatigue with online education, shrinking professional development budgets, and a pandemic not quite behind us. Even with that, our annual Original Canadian Gift Planning course, and National Conference on Strategic Philanthropy were phenomenal, sold-out events, as was the online Bequest Administration Essentials course that was in its second year. Gift Planning Fundamentals, distinct one-day programs for both charity fundraisers and professional advisors, were delivered successfully in both in-person and online formats, and we continued to do many in-house customized training and speaking events on both the technical aspects and the value-proposition of gift planning.

In 2023, the CAGP Foundation partnered with KCI Philanthropy on an important research project on the current context of Donor-Advised Funds, launching the report, Influence, Affluence and Opportunity:  Donor-Advised Funds in Canada, at the CAGP Annual National Conference. The report followed research done in 2018 and 2021, providing a comprehensive, longitudinal picture of this important and growing strategic giving tool.

The MFA-P (Master Financial Advisor in Philanthropy) continues to grow through CAGP’s partnership with Knowledge Bureau and Spire Philanthropy and we now have almost 300 holding the designation. Exciting plans are underway for 2024 to both promote this important program and convene those with the MFA-P and other advisors who are interested in integrating philanthropy in their services, or charity professionals who have an interest in better understanding the environment of advisors with philanthropic interests and expertise.

Influence Policy

We expect there are few, if any, of you who are not aware of the significant tax policy issue related to charitable giving that emerged last year; that being, changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax contained in the 2023 budget, which included a significant reduction in the donation tax credit as well as a reduction in the capital gains exemption for public security donations. While these changes would apply to only a small proportion of wealthy Canadian donors, many projected that the potential impact on donations could be significant.

We are grateful to CAGP’s esteemed Government Relations Committee for their leadership and efforts to provide feedback to the Department of Finance, as well as to almost 200 CAGP members who added their voice in support of our submission.

As reported in our most recent CAGP eNews, the Federal Government has paused implementation of these AMT changes as they consider feedback they have received. We will continue to monitor this matter and ensure our members are apprised of any further information as it becomes available.

Create Connections

It continues to be a priority for us that CAGP remain connected within the charitable and philanthropic landscape to ensure our unique voice on issues specific to strategic charitable giving. We liaise regularly with national charitable organizations, such as Imagine Canada, Philanthropic Foundations of Canada, and more recently have been cultivating connections with emerging organizations such as The Enchanté Network, which serves 2SLGBTQI+ serving organizations, and with Forward Global, a member organization for foundations around the world. We also maintain regular contact within the advisor community with organizations such as STEP, CALU, Advocis.

CAGP is having an increasing media presence, and this past year with articles in The Globe & Mail, Investment Executive, Advisor.ca and others, and CAGP was referred to in several other articles pertaining, in particular to the Alternative Minimum Tax issue.

Strengthen Our Organization

CAGP’s membership has seen some significant growth over the last few years. Membership is tracked on a monthly basis, and at one point we hit an all-time high. It’s incredibly encouraging to see our CAGP “family” expand, strengthening our voice and impact, as well as our scope for networking, which we know is so important to our members. Certainly much of this growth is related to the expanded reach through the Will Power campaign, but credit is also owed to our National Membership Committee who puts in enormous effort into strategy, tools and ensuring value for our members, as well as to Chapter Executive Committees across the country, who provide vital membership engagement and professional development at the local level.

Having said that, we are aware that some of our smaller Chapters are facing challenges in member recruitment and engagement. We are mindful of this in our strategic planning discussions and staff are considering what support Chapters may need, as well as creative ideas as to how Chapters can meet members’ needs at the local level.

Over the last year, we have continued on a trajectory of being more mindful and tactical around issues related to equity and inclusion, with an aim for CAGP to be a place of belonging for everyone with an interest in philanthropy and gift planning. We are creating room for honest and provocative conversations on these issues at the National Conference on Strategic Philanthropy, and we continue to explore ways to build and serve a membership that has a broader, more diverse representation, and where our programs and initiatives can better support their needs and interests. This is long term work and we are committed, and we are leaning in with a mindset of courage, responsible risk taking, and with honesty, integrity and humility. As we work to finalize a strategic plan this year, these issues will most certainly figure prominently.

Lastly, as to strategic planning, as mentioned earlier, we are later than anticipated in completing that work. That is due to an authentic interest and commitment from the Board of Directors to look deeply at our organization, our strengths, challenges, areas of growth and opportunity, as well as our own capacity on all fronts. We truly believe we, as an organization, are once again at a pivotal point. We are actors in a dramatically changing philanthropic environment, and in an environment that is facing unprecedented upheaval on issues such as climate, justice, economic disparity, workforce, and personal wellness. We believe CAGP has an important role to play, and want to ensure we are thoughtful and deliberate in how and where we focus our organization and resources. As we work over the coming months to finalize our plan for the next few years into our future, we look forward to sharing the results with you and to having you join us on a path to continued impact, with justice and generosity playing a central role.

We are enormously excited about 2024, and wish you the very best for a productive and impactful year. We hope to see you in Ottawa in April for the CAGP National Conference on Strategic Philanthropy!

As always, thank you for being part of our CAGP community, for all you contribute and for all your support.

Sincerely,