Inside the Survey’s Methods – Respondents Overview

Our understanding of the survey respondents is based upon Section 3, which pertains to organizational characteristics. The number of respondents in this section ranged from 477 to 482, due to some respondents choosing to skip certain questions. The descriptions in this overview are expressed as percentages of the total number of respondents for each question.

Of the respondents, 71 percent are registered charities, with the majority being community organizations and in the social services subsector. More than half of these charities are also registered non-profits. Only 6 percent of respondents were business serving non-profit organizations, and 1.5 percent were quasi-governmental non-profit organizations.

Similar to previous reports, the majority of subsector representation is from social services, which accounts for 41 percent of respondents, followed by arts, culture, heritage, and tourism (15 percent), health (10 percent), education and research (6 percent), and environment (6 percent).

We asked respondents to tell us about their operating budgets over the last 12 months: 22 percent reported operating budgets of $1M – $2.9M, followed by 16 percent with budgets of $0 – $99,999, and an additional 16 percent with budgets between $500,000 – $999,999. Only 7 percent of organizations reported having budgets above $10M.

Respondents reported the government to be the primary source of revenue (41 percent), followed by mixed revenue (25 percent), earned income (10 percent), and foundations (9 percent). 34 percent of organizations indicated they serve a rural, geographically remote, northern, or small community16 and 17 percent of those rural serving organizations are completely volunteer driven.

In terms of geographic representation, 22 percent of respondents indicated they have a province-wide focus, and 8 percent have a pan-Canadian focus. 17 percent of respondents focus on the City of Vancouver, 14 percent on Greater Victoria and the Southern Gulf Islands, and another 7-8 percent focus on other areas within Metro Vancouver and the Nanaimo regional district. By grouping respondent locations into provincial health authority regions, we discovered that 40 percent indicated they focus on the Fraser Health region, 38 percent on the Vancouver Island Health region, 37 percent on the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 30 percent on the Interior Health region, and 9 percent on the Northern Health region17. These groupings and their related response rates can be found in Appendix A.4 (Note: respondents were not required to disclose a geographic focus).

When respondents were asked to indicate the focus of their organization’s programs, services, or activities, 22 percent reported they serve the general public with no specific demographic focus, while other organizations reported primarily serving:

1. Adults (48 percent)
2. Seniors (40 percent)
3. Youth (39 percent)
4. Children (32 percent)
5. Families (31 percent)
6. People experiencing poverty or with low income (26 percent)
   • Overall, the majority of survey respondents were not organizations that are led-by and serve a specific equity-denied group. However, 124 respondents identified their organizations as both led-by and serve the following specific equity-denied groups.
7. Racialized/people of color (24 percent)
8. Indigenous peoples (23 percent)
9. Women (19 percent)
10. LGBTQIA+ (18.5 percent)
11. Immigrants and newcomers (15 percent)
12. People with disabilities (14.5 percent)

Summary Trends

This report presents summary trends determined by weighted averages and percentage response rates. These are provided for the various components of six major parameters reported on, which are:

1. Revenues
2. Expenses
3. Program and service delivery
4. Human resources
5. Central operations
6. Governance

Understanding summary trends by weighted averages

In the survey, from questions 4 to 7, and 25 to 26, respondents were asked to choose a trend for each component within the six major parameters. The trend options were: Increasing, Staying about the same, Decreasing, Not relevant, and Not sure.

Weighted averages were used for this scales-based analysis by assigning each option a numerical value or weight (5 = Increasing, 4 = Staying about the same, 3 = Decreasing, 2 = Not relevant, and 1 = Not sure). The average was then calculated for each component, producing a number that indicates, on average, the overall response trend. This average number identifies the summary trend among all respondents. If the calculated average is close to two options (e.g. between 4.45 to 4.5), the trend is expressed as a range between those two options (e.g. staying about the same to increasing). The interpretation and sense-making of these summary trends were informed by referencing the qualitative responses collected from the open-ended questions.