Nearly Half (47%) of Canadians Would Prefer a Charitable Gift Over a More Traditional Gift This Holiday Season

Toronto, Ontario, November 22, 2022 — Nearly half of Canadians (47%) say they’d prefer to receive a charitable gift from their family, friends, neighbours and colleagues this year rather than a more traditional gift, according to a new Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of CanadaHelps.org.  More specifically:

• One in four (24%) would prefer a charitable donation made in their honour to a specific charity chosen by the gift giver with a tangible impact (i.e. feeding a community member in need, or sending a child to school). This is a particularly popular option among Albertans, 30% of whom would opt to receive this type of gift.
• A similar proportion (23%) would prefer a Charity Gift Card where they can choose the charity that will benefit from the gift card balance. Once again, Albertans (29%) are more likely to prefer this type of gift.

On the other hand, roughly one-half (53%) of Canadians say they’d prefer to receive a traditional present with no charitable impact (i.e. a sweater, movie passes, candles, technology, a book, chocolate, etc.). Atlantic Canadians are most likely to prefer receiving a traditional gift, followed by those living in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (58%), British Columbia (56%), Ontario (54%), Quebec (51%) and Alberta (40%).

Given inflationary and affordability pressures, the poll also highlighted that Canadians intend to scale back their holiday spending this year. One in three (35%) anticipate spending less on holiday presents this year, compared to just 7% who say they will spend more. One in three (31%) will spend about the same amount, while 19% haven’t yet considered how much they will spend. One in ten (9%) say they do not purchase holiday presents.

Those with kids (46%) are much more likely than those without kids (31%) to say they will tighten the purse strings this holiday season. Women (40%) are also significantly more likely than men (31%) to say they’ll spend less on gifts this year.

About the Study

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between October 28 and November 1, 2022 on behalf of CanadaHelps.org. For this survey, a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18+ were interviewed. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

For more information on this Factum, please contact:

Sean Simpson
Senior Vice President, Ipsos Public Affairs
+1 416 324 2002
[email protected]

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