Your client wants to make a $50,000 gift to the local food bank. Now what?

Your client is excited. They've decided to make a significant donation to a charity they care about. It could be the local food bank, or it could be a health research organization. They're looking to you for guidance, and you want to help them make an informed decision.

But here's the reality: you have no standardized way to evaluate whether this charity is financially healthy, well-governed, or delivering meaningful impact.

You know you should "trust but verify," especially with anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance requirements at your institution. Yet professional charity due diligence costs $5,000-$15,000 per organization and takes 40+ hours. This is completely impractical when your client wants to give this quarter.

Every year, thousands of Canadians search "how to evaluate a charity" or "charity ratings Canada" looking for answers. Wealth advisors face the same challenge at scale: 91% discuss philanthropy with clients, but only 13% of those conversations are meaningful, because the tools don't exist.

Until now, there has been no standardized, accessible charity evaluation framework in Canada.

Key Takeaways

• Traditional charity due diligence costs thousands of dollars and takes dozens of hours for both the charity and donor to complete
• Canada has 85,000 registered charities with no standardized evaluation system for advisors
• The largest “charity ranking” site in Canada only has 800 charities 🤯

Why This Problem Exists

No Standardized Evaluation Infrastructure

The Canada Revenue Agency maintains comprehensive financial data on all 85,000 registered charities through mandatory T3010 filings. But raw CRA data doesn't translate into actionable insights. The CRA database tells you if a charity is registered—not whether they're well-managed, financially sustainable, or delivering impact.

This leaves advisors navigating three imperfect paths:

Reputation-based recommendations: "Give to organizations you've heard of" works until a client wants to support a smaller, specialized charity where reputation doesn't scale or they give to many different charities around the world. 

Manual research: You can spend hours reviewing financial statements, board composition, program reports. But without sector expertise, you're not sure what you're looking for.

Outsourced due diligence: Professional consultants charge $5K-$15K per charity assessment. For most advisory relationships, this cost is prohibitive, especially when clients want to give to multiple organizations.

The Charity Ratings Problem

Some advisors turn to charity rating platforms hoping for simple answers. But charity ratings create more problems than they solve:

Oversimplified scores hide context: A three-star charity building essential infrastructure may deliver better long-term impact than a five-star organization maintaining the status quo. Star ratings can't capture this nuance.

Overhead ratio myths: Rating systems that penalize "overhead" encourage charities to underinvest in staff, technology, and planning—the very infrastructure that enables effective programs.

Limited coverage: Most rating platforms cover only 800-1,000 charities, leaving 98% of Canadian organizations unrated.

No standardization: Different rating methodologies produce different scores for the same charity, creating confusion rather than clarity.

Advisors don't need ratings that declare which charity is "best." They need standardized evaluation frameworks that help clients make informed decisions based on their unique values and priorities.

Compliance and Fiduciary Considerations

For wealth advisors and DAF administrators, there's also a regulatory dimension. Financial institutions have AML obligations and fiduciary duties to clients. Simply processing disbursement requests without validation creates compliance risk.

You need defensible documentation showing you've conducted appropriate charity due diligence—especially for significant gifts or unfamiliar organizations.

How WellCheck Solves This

What We Do For Advisors and DAF Administrators

WellCheck is a professional charity due diligence for donor-advised funds and wealth advisors, automated.

We deliver the same comprehensive analysis a $5,000 consultant would provide—examining financial health, governance, impact, transparency, and mission alignment—but we do it in 30 minutes instead of 40 hours.

For every Canadian registered charity, WellCheck provides:

• Financial health and controls, including peer comparisons
• Governance, accreditations, and accountability review
• Impact approach assessment
• Transparency and communication evaluation
• Leadership and operational approach

How It Works

Step 1: Access all 85,000 Canadian charities
Unlike the CRA search interface (designed for compliance monitoring), WellCheck indexes every registered Canadian charity with AI-powered search that filters by cause, geography, size, and impact area. You can discover organizations your clients would never find through traditional search.

Step 2: When you're serious about making a significant gift, click "Request a WellCheck"
Instantly generate a comprehensive charity evaluation report for any organization in our database.

Step 3: Our AI analyzes the charity's data
WellCheck processes CRA data, annual reports, audited financials, and program documentation. Our AI contextualizes performance against comparable organizations. Is their reserve level appropriate for their mission type? Is their overhead ratio reasonable given their stage of growth? You get analysis, not just data.

Step 4: You receive a comprehensive due diligence report
Each report provides defensible documentation answering the question: "How do I evaluate a charity in Canada?" Your compliance team has what they need, and you have the intelligence to guide strategic giving conversations.

What a WellCheck Report Includes

Each WellCheck report delivers professional charity due diligence through:

• Executive Summary with key findings, strengths, and areas of attention
• Financial Health Dashboard with 3-year trends and peer benchmarking across sector standards
• Governance Review covering board composition, conflict of interest policies, and financial oversight
• Impact Assessment examining theory of change, outcome measurement, and program effectiveness
• Transparency Analysis evaluating public reporting and stakeholder communication
• Risk Factors & Recommendations for informed donor engagement and ongoing monitoring

The Complete WellFunded Platform

WellCheck is the due diligence engine, but the full WellFunded platform transforms how advisors serve clients:

• Search 85,000 charities by cause, geography, impact area, and organizational size
• Compare similar organizations side-by-side with standardized metrics
• See social proof: "143 donors supported this charity in the past 30 days"
• Manage grants through WellConnect for foundations and donor-advised fund providers

For advisors, this means transforming philanthropy from isolated transactions into strategic portfolio conversations.

The Outcome: Everyone Wins

For Advisors

Fulfill your fiduciary duty with defensible documentation. Transform philanthropy conversations from transaction processing to strategic guidance. Differentiate your practice with professional-grade charity intelligence that demonstrates you understand modern philanthropic infrastructure.

For Clients

Replace uncertainty with confidence. Discover organizations perfectly aligned with their values—including excellent smaller charities they'd never find through traditional search. Make informed decisions backed by professional charity due diligence.

For Institutions (DAF Providers & Wealth Firms)

Mitigate compliance risk with standardized due diligence documentation. Increase fund holder engagement and distribution rates. Position your donor-advised fund as sophisticated philanthropy infrastructure, not just disbursement processing.

For the Charitable Sector

Strategic capital flows to effective organizations beyond brand recognition. The "overhead myth" fades as contextual analysis replaces arbitrary ratios. Transparency becomes a competitive advantage, incentivizing better nonprofit management sector-wide.

Get Started With WellCheck Today

Traditional charity due diligence is inaccessible: $5,000-$15,000 per assessment, 40+ hours of work, expertise most advisors don't have. WellCheck delivers professional-grade charity evaluation in 30 minutes instead of weeks, transforming how advisors guide clients through philanthropic decisions.

Whether you're a wealth advisor seeking to elevate philanthropy conversations, a DAF administrator wanting to increase fund holder engagement, or a foundation needing standardized grant evaluation, WellCheck provides the infrastructure that strategic giving requires.

See WellCheck in Action

Request a Sample Report
View a completed WellCheck assessment for a Canadian charity and see how professional due diligence becomes accessible.

Book a 15-Minute Demo
We'll show you how WellCheck integrates into your existing advisor workflow and demonstrate the complete WellFunded platform.

Explore All 85,000 Canadian Charities
Start discovering organizations your clients would love to support—with professional charity due diligence built in.

Join WellFunded: the intelligence layer for strategic philanthropy in Canada.