As a charity, EducationMatters has to be 100% transparent on the cost of fundraising and must try to recover costs associated with our operations and services. While CBE has not passed on the costs of donation processing previously, this work has taken staff time and resources that could be better spent supporting schools. This transition will create greater efficiencies by reducing duplicated work between EducationMatters and the CBE, and allowing EducationMatters staff to focus on working with the community to provide more educational opportunities for students.

Head over to the Community Campaigns area – the form for applying for your own page is at the bottom, under all the active campaigns. All campaigns are searchable by school name and area of interest, and schools can have more than one campaign active at any one time.

No! Any donor can use the generic ‘Donate to a CBE School’ form and select your school from a drop-down menu. For most donations this is sufficient – a separate page is useful when you have a larger project or initiative that you’d like to better explain to your community or for when you want funds directed to a specific area.

No, we can process and disburse donations on behalf of your school without a separate fund being set up. The benefit of establishing a fund is that EducationMatters will provide your Council/Society with a fund statement enumerating how much your fund raised in a given year, as well as exactly how the funds were disbursed. Fund statements are typically shared in late spring/early summer.

Absolutely! Some schools already have permanent fundraising pages for their endowments. If your school doesn’t currently have an endowment fund with us you can learn more about setting one up here. Endowments are great ways to ensure that your school has access to consistent funding in perpetuity and can be maintained alongside flow-through funds.

Anything considered to be an enhancement, and not a core educational responsibility of the government, is eligible for a tax receipt. So while EducationMatters can’t pay for teacher salaries, transportation for daily attendance or building expenses, we can support things like reading books, math manipulatives, extra technology, play equipment, field trips, residencies, basic needs, and much more. As per charitable law, a donation cannot be directed to a specific student – the gift has to benefit a group of students (a whole school, or a specific student demographic such as ‘special needs’, ‘Indigenous’, ‘financial need’, group of students in a club or program, etc) or through an application process, a student award. Charitable receipts for any fee payment are not eligible.

You can still use EducationMatters’ platform if you don’t need a tax receipt, or you can collect funds in your own bank account and pay for school costs directly from there.

Generally, no. EducationMatters works on behalf of students, and any funds we collect have to directly benefit them. Buying new books for the school library and adding a dedication to staff members would be eligible, as would certain Professional Development opportunities for school staff, but paying for food during parent/teacher conferences or staff meetings would not be applicable.

If your council/society is set up to issue its own tax receipts and wish to continue to do that then you absolutely can! EducationMatters can help your group avoid the administration (and CRA reporting requirements) if you are interested and we’re happy to take over that function for you.

EducationMatters deposits funds directly into your school’s account. When we set up your fundraising page or accept donations via gift-matching entities we always ensure that the donor’s wishes are followed, so, for example, if you run a campaign to buy reading books, your Principal will sign an agreement to only spend that money on those books. We can hold onto funds until a fundraising threshold is hit, disburse funds quarterly, or disburse funds monthly depending on the needs of the school.

Cheques should be made payable to EducationMatters and mailed to us at the Education Centre (your school can also send them through inter-office mail). Ideally, cash should be deposited in your Society bank account then either transferred electronically or sent over as a cheque. Keep a spreadsheet of donor names, addresses, contact details, and donation amount and we’ll manually issue tax receipts to them in office.

EducationMatters always deposits funds raised directly into your school’s account. Prior to depositing, we send your Principal a Gift Agreement which outlines exactly what the funds raised should be spent on based on direction from your school society/council.