Toronto, ON · Private foundation
Donner Canadian Foundation
The foundation makes grants to canadian registered charities and listed u.s.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2023
- Under C$10k1 grant · C$5k
- C$10k–50k49 grants · C$1.3M
- C$50k–250k58 grants · C$5.5M
- C$250k+2 grants · C$630k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| Clean Economy Fund | C$380,000 |
| Coast Conservation Endowment Fund Foundation | C$250,000 |
| MakeWay Charitable Society | C$209,000 |
| Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund | C$200,000 |
| Centre for Civic Engagement | C$195,280 |
| Fraser Institute | C$185,000 |
| UHN Foundation | C$175,000 |
| RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values and EnvironmentaL | C$160,000 |
| Macdonald-Laurier Institute The | C$160,000 |
| Montreal Economic Institute (Institut Économique de Mon | C$158,000 |
| MakeWay Foundation | C$150,000 |
| Oceans North Conservation Society | C$147,000 |
| Canadian Federation of Humane Societies (operating as Hu | C$137,500 |
| Doctors Without Borders Canada | C$130,000 |
| Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources Inc. | C$125,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Where your grant dollars land — at home and around the world.
Which regions your grants reach
Grants placed by each grantee’s location, read from the T3010 filings.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +56% since the first grant, against +39% for the ones you funded once.
123 repeat relationships — 93 still active in FY2023, 30 since wound down; 17 grantees were first funded in FY2023 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2023, 90% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; C$719k went to new ones.
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.”
Backed again, and grew
- CECLEAN ECONOMY FUND7× · 2017–2023 · C$2.0M · revenue +235% · 27% of their budget
- MIMACDONALD-LAURIER INSTITUTE / L'INSTITUT MACDONALD-LAURIER7× · 2017–2023 · C$1.0M · revenue +91%
- CFCANADIAN FEDERATION OF HUMANE SOCIETIES7× · 2017–2023 · C$987k · revenue +147%
Funded once
- DUDalhousie Universitygraduatedone grant, 2017 · C$100k · revenue +41%
- MCMontreal City Missiongraduatedone grant, 2021 · C$95k · revenue +104%
- CECommunity Education Development Association of Winnipeg Inc.one grant, 2017 · C$62k · revenue -12%
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent CRA filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matches that aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The canada west foundation is an independent non-partisan public policy think tank that focuses on the policies that shape the west and by extension canada. through our evidence-based research and commentary we provide practical solutions…
The Walrus Foundation publishes independent fact-based journalism fiction and art in The Walrus magazine and at thewalrus.ca. The Walrus stories present a variety of perspectives on the most complex issues of our time focusing on six key…
The Pembina Institute promotes public education and information that increases understanding about environmental and global energy issues. We provide research analysis and recommendations to inform policies and practices related to energy…
CIFAR’s research programs are at the heart of its operations designed to push the boundaries of knowledge and create long-term societal impact. Currently CIFAR supports 15 research programs across diverse fields from artificial…
Nature Canada's mission is to protect and conserve wildlife habitats in Canada by engaging people and advocating on behalf of nature. The organization conducts conservation work which involves supporting community-based efforts to protect…
Created by Parliament in 1970 IDRC has been committed in supporting research in developing countries undertaken by the people of those countries for their own development. IDRC has five areas of focus: Climate-Resilient Food Systems Global…
Wildlife preservation canada exists to save animal species at risk from extinction in canada by performing hands-on action for species requiring direct intervention to recover. wpc build canada's conservation capacity by providing…
World fisheries trust created in 1995 is a canadian non-profit organization dedicated to the equitable and sustainable use and conservation of aquatic biodiversity. it acts locally and globally. the organization is not an activist group…
* to conduct research on climate change environmental protection ecological conservation and preservation environmental science and renewable energy; *to publicize conducted research to the general public to increase understanding of the…
Generate Canada is a national charity that connects problem-solvers across sectors and value chains to generate solutions to the most complex challenges at the nexus of environment economy and society. The organization’s vision is a strong…
Mental Health Research Canada (MHRC) is a national charitable organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Canadians by advancing mental health knowledge. Our vision is to create a Canada with better mental health for all…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Environment Funders Canada / Philanthropie Canadienne pour l'environnement and the most unlike its peers is We Are Young Association. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
169 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2024.
Each one resolved to its own CRA returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2024, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 169 of the 183 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds CLEAN ECONOMY FUND ↗
- Who funds MACDONALD-LAURIER INSTITUTE / L'INSTITUT MACDONALD-LAURIER ↗
- Who funds CANADIAN FEDERATION OF HUMANE SOCIETIES ↗
- Who funds CENTRE FOR CIVIC ENGAGEMENT ↗
- Who funds Montreal Economic Institute (Institut Économique de Mon ↗
- Who funds CANADIAN PARKS AND WILDERNESS SOCIETY ↗
- Who funds PROJECT ORBIS INTERNATIONAL INC. ↗
- Who funds University of British Columbia ↗
- Who funds Coast Conservation Endowment Fund Foundation ↗
- Who funds Toronto General & Western Hospital Foundation ↗
- Who funds RAVEN (Respecting Aboriginal Values and EnvironmentaL ↗
- Who funds Fraser Institute ↗
- Who funds MakeWay Foundation ↗
- Who funds Covenant House Toronto ↗
- Who funds YELLOWSTONE TO YUKON CONSERVAITON INITIATIVE FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds Doctors Without Borders Canada ↗
- Who funds CENTRE FOR INDIGENOUS ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCES. INC. ↗
- Who funds MakeWay Charitable Society ↗
- Who funds Ecology Action Centre ↗
- Who funds Oceans North Conservation Society ↗
- Who funds NATURE UNITED ↗
- Who funds THE GOVERNING COUNCIL OF THE UNIVERISTY OF TORONTO ↗
- Who funds Oceana Canada ↗
- Who funds Nature Conservancy of Canada ↗
- Who funds Lewa Wildlife Conservancy (Canada) ↗
- Who funds THE GOVERNING COUNCIL OF THE SALVATION ARMY IN CANADA ↗
- Who funds World Wildlife Fund Canada ↗
- Who funds Canadian Constitution Foundation ↗
- Who funds ECOTRUST CANADA ↗
- Who funds CAMP OOCHIGEAS ↗
- Who funds Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning McGill ↗
- Who funds Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking ↗
- Who funds Indigenous Peoples Resilience Fund ↗
- Who funds Windmill Microlending ↗
- Who funds C. D. HOWE INSTITUTE ↗
- Who funds Nova Scotia Nature Trust ↗
- Who funds Earthroots Fund ↗
- Who funds Community Foundations of Canada ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Weston Family Foundation / Fondation de la famille Weston · The McLean Foundation · Makeway Foundation · The Peter Gilgan Foundation · Toronto Foundation · The Sitka Foundation · The George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation · The Trottier Family Foundation/La Fondation Familiale Trottier · Ottawa Community Foundation / Fondation Communautaire d'Ottawa · Clench House Foundation · McLean Smits Family Foundation · Fondation Écho /Echo Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.