(Publication date: January 16, 2024)
Charity Certification Policy
About Our Directory
We believe that providing donors with a wide variety of choices is key to increasing charitable giving. Therefore, we provide donors with a large directory of charities to which they may recommend PayPal Giving Fund Canada (“PPGFC”) to grant funds. All donor donations are made to PPGFC, a charity registered with the Canada Revenue Agency (Registration No.: 812867752RR0001) and designated as a public foundation.
The PPGFC directory includes those registered charities or qualified donees that have opened a PayPal business account, become a PayPal Confirmed Charity, and agreed to the PayPal Giving Fund Charity User Agreement (“Participating Charity”).
On certain partner programs, the directory may also include unenrolled charities that have not agreed to the PPGFC Charity User Agreement terms. We receive information about unenrolled charities using publicly-available information.
Inclusion within the PayPal Giving Fund Canada directory requires:
- Verification that the charity is registered as a charity with the Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) (“registered charity”) or is a qualified donee as defined by the Income Tax Act (“qualified donee”);
- Confirmation by PayPal that the charity has not been identified as being subject to sanctions; and
- Verification by PayPal that a charity has not previously been found to have breached PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy.
Removal of a Charity from our Directory
PPGFC retains ultimate discretion over all donations it receives and reserves the right to conduct additional vetting of charities in our directory on an ongoing basis. For example, PPGFC may investigate suspicious activity and may remove any charity from its directory based on the outcome of such investigation. PPGFC may remove any charity from its directory if it determines that the charity promotes violence, hate, or racial intolerance, or is likely to be engaged in money laundering or other illegal activities. PPGFC also confirms through regular checks of CRA data that the above inclusion standards continue to be met, and PPGFC will remove charities that appear on sanctions lists or have their charitable registration or qualified donee status revoked.
[As PPGFC’s payments processor, PayPal may request that PPGFC remove any charity from its directory for breach of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy or other relevant policy or regulatory obligation.] In addition, from time to time, PPGFC may enter into agreements with merchant partners to enable customer giving programs through their own websites. Such partners may choose to remove charities from their websites and programs, at any time. Finally, a charity may request to be removed from PPGFC directory and merchant partner websites and programs at any time by contacting PayPal Giving Fund Canada.
Granting Funds to Charities within our Directory
We make every effort to grant funds to registered charities or qualified donees recommended by our donors. However, the listing of a charity in our directory is not a guarantee that the charity will receive funds from PPGFC’s fundraising programs. In the rare event that we determine not to grant funds to a charity (or qualified donee) recommended by a donor because they are no longer properly registered or for some other reason, we will seek an alternative charity from the donor and reassign those funds to the alternative registered charity (or qualified donee) designated by the donor pursuant to the Donation Delivery Policy. If the donor does not designate an alternative registered charity or qualified donee, we will reassign the funds to another registered charity or qualified donee, which has been vetted by PPGFC, pursuant to our Donation Delivery Policy. As PPGFC is the registered charity that received the donation from the donor, the tax-deductible status of the donation does not change.
How Funds are Used by Charities
PPGFC makes unrestricted grants and does not verify how a charity uses funds it receives. PPGFC assumes no responsibility with respect to the use of funds. Donors may obtain information about a charity’s programs and use of funds by consulting the charity’s website or its profile, as presented in the customer giving programs we enable.