frequently asked questions

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Our Donation Portal operates just like an on-line store. There are two activities you must perform to donate through the portal: 

1. selecting your charities and the amounts you wish to give; and 
2. checking out or payment processing

The checkout section is confusing because the template we’re using thinks we’re an on-line retail store. But once you have gone through this confusion once, it will seem pretty simple, we promise.

1) Selecting the Charities

You find the charity you want to support and click on the logo to bring up a purchase screen for that charity. You can find it several ways:  alphabetically by scrolling through a number of pages’ worth of charities, by type of charity (see categories on the left side of the screen), or by keying the name of the charity into the search bar at the top left of the screen (look for the magnifying glass).

If you wish to give less than $1,000 to this charity:

• Click on the drop-down menu under Dollar Value and select a “price” of $1
• The Quantity field is for how many $1’s you wish to give; i.e. if you wish to give $25, then you would put 25 in the quantity field for 25 X $1 = $25.

If you wish to give $1,000 or more to this charity:

• Click on the drop-down menu under Dollar Value and select a “price” of $100
• The Quantity field is for how many $100’s you wish to give; i.e., if you wish to give $2,000, then you would put 20 in the quantity field for 20 X $100 = $2,000.

That action will add it to your cart shown on the top right of the page. You can then choose to checkout or continue shopping. 

You can give to many charities with a single payment through our foundation. Each time you click on one, you will see all of the charities you have selected and the amounts you have chosen to give them plus a running total. The charities will get the money you’re donating, and you will get one receipt. When you have finished selecting charities and inputting the amounts you’d like to give, click on Checkout or your “cart” to go through the check-out process. 

2) Checking out/Payment Processing:

When you go to the Check Out page, it looks like your only option is to use PayPal. This is not the case. You can pay using PayPal, Credit Card, Debit Card or Personal Cheque. 

Payment using PayPal:  If you have a PayPal account and wish to pay with it, just click on the PayPal logo and you will be taken to a sign-in page for PayPal where you can follow the instructions to pay. This page also gives you the option to create an account. But that is not your only option. You may also pay by Credit Card, Interac Transfer or Cheque.

Payment by Credit Card: After selecting Credit Card, you will be prompted to enter your card's information, including its number, expiration date and 3-digit CVC. Fill out this information and select "Complete Your Order".

Payment by Google Pay or Apple Pay: If you have cards saved on either of these services, click the "Pay" button featuring the associated logo and select your saved card information and complete your payment in a small pop-up window.

Payment by Interac or Cheque: If you wish to pay by interac or cheque from your bank account, then on the check-out page, fill in your name and contact information and then click on Continue to go to the Shipping and Payment page. At the very bottom of that page, you will see a spot to click on that says Pay by Cheque/Interac Transfer. Click on that and then on Complete Your Order. You will then see a message that says you will receive an email and quoting you an order number. The foundation now will receive an email telling us of your preferred charities and donation amounts and you will too. But you will then have to write us a cheque or go to your internet banking app to actually pay us the amount you would like to donate.

Cheques should be made out to The Burton Charitable Foundation and mailed to 60 Delamere Drive, Stittsville, Ontario, K2S 1R2.

Interac Payments should be directed to The Burton Charitable Foundation and sent to sectres@burtoncharitable.ca . You can ask any security question you like so long as the answer is “BCF”

1. Note that until we receive your payment, your donations will not be processed nor your charitable receipt be issued.

Since our inception in 1960, that’s a very long list! In fact, we’ve outlasted some of the charities we’ve supported! Organizations we have supported since our web-site was introduced in 2015

are listed on our Donation Portal, available through a link on the banner at the top of the home page on our site. You can scroll through the organizations (mostly listed alphabetically) or search for a specific charity by going to the search box on that page. On the left-hand side of

the portal page, you will find types of charities we give to such as those organizations involved in the Arts or those involved in Environmental causes; clicking on those will give you a subset of charitable organizations that operate in that particular sphere. Note that a donation directly to the Capital fund or membership as well as gift memberships are available – use the Burton Charitable Foundation link on the left side of the page.

It’s easy and there’s more than one way. First, go to the Donation Portal

(https://burtoncharitable.ca/donation-portal ).

The charities on the portal can be listed in many ways but the default is an A-to-Z listing. If you know the name of your charity, you can scroll down to find it alphabetically. Another option is to click on the type of charity using the menu on the left-hand side of the page. If your charity is, say, a social welfare charity, click on Social Welfare to see a subset of the charities on the portal related to social welfare. Just be aware that charities supporting particular populations (such as women, immigrants, aboriginal peoples, armed forces for example) will likely be under the type “specific populations” even if they operate in the Social Welfare sphere. Most categories are small enough that you can see at a glance whether your chosen charity is already on the portal.

Or, you can click on the small icon of the magnifying glass in the top right corner on the masthead. Key the name of the charity into the search bar. The site will produce a short list of all locations on the site that match the name. Among those will be the name and logo on the

portal for that charity.

Voila! If your charity is not there, you can arrange to have it added to the portal – see next question.

By law, our foundation may only donate to registered Canadian charities. If your chosen charity

qualifies by having a charitable registration number a.k.a. business number, then we can

support your donation. Usually, the charity’s web-site will have this information, or you can

check the CRA list of charities or check via www.Canadahelps.org .

Go to the Donation Portal and check to see if we already have that charity (see previous question).

If we don’t have your chosen charity, you can arrange to have it added by clicking on the picture

in the How to Add a Charity box at the top of the portal page. Clicking on the picture will open an electronic form that will allow you to identify yourself and the charity you wish to add to the portal.

Tell us the name and address of the organization you wish to donate to as well as its business

number, information generally found on the charity’s website.

It takes about a week to get an organization listed on the portal. We can often turn your

request around quicker than that, but we are volunteers and we do face a rush of requests in

the November/December period every year. Check back on the portal a week after your

request and see if it’s there. If not, you have permission to remind us!

Yes. Membership is available to anyone who is related to a person descended from Charles

Luther Burton. This includes all varieties of life partners, adopted children and children from a

previous marriage.

Young children may also be members – that’s why our membership fee is a donation to any

registered Canadian charity or a donation of $1 to the foundation. Never too early to develop

that giving habit!

Yes. Membership is available to anyone who is related to a person descended from Charles

Luther Burton. This includes all varieties of life partners, adopted children and children from a

previous marriage.

Small organizations such as our own must be very careful to guard against electronic invasion

and fraud. That is why we do not keep any financial information from our members other than

a record of your donations, required by law.

We use the PayPal portal for your financial transactions because it is robust and secure.

We believe that part of the value of belonging to a family foundation is the ability to mobilize your family in support of a valuable cause. But by the same token, we have to respect our members’ privacy. You can let your family members know about a charity you think is a particularly good cause in three ways:

1.  You can write a mini-profile for our news posts. A mini-profile gives a short 1 – 2 paragraph description of a member of our family – where they live, what they do, their own family connections etc. – along with information about a charity they have a particular interest in and why. People like to read human interest items and could be moved by the profile to make donations in their own right.
2. You can ask for a spot in our periodic communications with members. For this, you need to put together an appeal of no more than two paragraphs. Communications to members come out only once per quarter, so your timing can’t be immediate for this avenue.
3. You can write directly to the foundation’s Board of Directors via communications@burtoncharitable.ca and request that your charity be highlighted on our portal so members going to the portal will see it.

You can always check out the charity’s web-site directly for more information. Or, if you wish to contact the member who suggested that organization, contact us at vicepresident@burtoncharitable.ca and we will forward your request, along with your email address, to the member you are directing the question to. You can then undertake a direct correspondence or conversation about the charity. This helps protect the privacy of our members while allowing for family communication to take place.

Yes, yes, yes! We are a very small organization, completely run by family members on a

volunteer basis. We need help maintaining/improving our web-site, keeping in touch with our

members, trouble-shooting, organizing our AGM and all the administration that a small

Canadian corporation needs. Let us know you’re interested and we’ll work together to see

where there might be a fit between our needs and your skills and knowledge. Contact

vicepresident@burtoncharitablec.ca .

We like to have a good cross-section of our family, of our geography and of our age range on the BCF Board of Directors. Our Board is a “working board” meaning that we all have operational

responsibilities as well. If you have strong organizational or board background and can spare

the time, you would be a good candidate for our board. You can suggest yourself to any board

member for consideration or you can nominate yourself (or find another member to act as

nominator) as a director at any Annual General Meeting (AGM). Another avenue to board

membership is to volunteer with us to gain experience, demonstrate your skills and become

known to us in a more substantial way. Then, who knows? You might just be approached by us

to serve as a director.

At its most fundamental, the board of directors make decisions and take actions on behalf of the

members. The board of a charitable foundation has five basic roles: 

1. To ensure that our foundation is meeting all of the requirements of a foundation as laid out by law and regulation;
2. To ensure that we adhere to the by-laws of the organization; 
3. To prudently oversee the operations of the organization; 
4. To act as gate-keepers for membership to ensure that new applicants qualify to become members; and 
5. To make decisions about the distribution of surplus funds and other donations from our capital base. Because we are a working board, each director has some responsibility for operations or special projects, so there is some requirement to work on our own. But we meet about four times per year to discuss and decide issues relevant to a foundation. Our meetings are all on-line so geographic location is not a factor in who can be a board member.

Yes, we do.  Here it is:

BCF Investment Mission Statement

The Burton Charitable Foundation strives to invest in companies and funds that reflect our values and principles. We seek investments with organizations that align social and environmental goals with our financial objectives. We lean toward companies with exemplary records on diversity and inclusion, labour and employee welfare, human rights, and environmental issues.

Regulations require that Canadian Charitable Foundations distribute 3.5% of the value of their total assets every fiscal year. So the amount we must distribute to registered Canadian charities depends on two things: the total value of our investment assets and the value of donations our members have given throughout the year. In 2022, we gave away an additional $9,000 beyond

the total member donations to eight charities nominated by our membership and four charities that had made unsolicited requests for a donation. But 3.5% is just the amount we must distribute; we may choose to distribute more. At the moment, we are trying to build our capital base back to a larger amount in order to increase our longer-term donation power, so we are sticking to the 3.5%.

Any registered Canadian charity may approach our foundation for a donation or a grant of money. The charity can go to Apply for Grant/Donation on the menu of the home page. This will take you to an explanation of our annual process for additional donations as well as a form the charity can fill out to apply.  The form is simple and takes only a few minutes to complete.  At the bottom of the page under the form is a SUBMIT button. If you would personally like to endorse the charity, a note from you as well would be useful so the Board knows it’s of special interest to one of our members. 

The Board makes decisions about distributions of funds once a year towards the end of the fiscal period. Any requests received before January 15ᵗʰ will be considered. Because of capacity constraints, we don’t respond formally to all requests, but if you have indicated an interest, we would respond to both the charity and yourself with information about our decision. Both you and your recommended charity should know that we are a very small family-driven foundation. We have undertaken ambitious donations goals in the past but are  now concentrating on smaller donations to causes of interest to our members and their communities.

Yes, of course. It’s never too early to develop the charitable habit and our membership fees are

structured to allow even the youngest family member to start thinking about charities they

would like to support. Email us at sectres@burtoncharitable.ca and we’ll arrange to have

someone call your child to discuss. Ideally, you would be around when we have that conversation, of course. 

There is one barrier to very young children participating directly and

that’s the donation method, working through PayPal. If your child has a bank account, you can

open a PayPal account for them (it’s free) or you may wish for us to process your child’s

donation through your own account or credit card. That’s why it’s better to discuss first.

Well, we’re working on that. For now, if you wish one of your donations to be in memory of

someone, please make your donation through the portal and then drop us a line at sectres@burtoncharitable.ca to let us know the name of the person. We will ensure that our

donation to that charity includes both your name and the name of the person in whose memory

you are donating.

We’re working on this too. For now, if you wish to donate to a particular person’s campaign at a

registered Canadian charity, make your donation and drop us a line at sectres@burtoncharitable.ca to let us know which person and which campaign the donation

should be directed to.