Importing American-Style Charity Activism

In the U.S., the Tides Foundation (controlled, in turn, by the Tides Network) is well known for funding left-leaning causes using what some call dark money. The money is “dark” in the sense that grants coming from Tides do not reveal which donor directed the funds. Tides has no legal requirement to disclose its donors’ identities.

The Tides Foundation in the U.S. has been investigated for providing significant funding to militant anti-Israel groups that organize illegal and often violent demonstrations against Jewish and Israeli targets.¹

Tides U.S. and its American affiliates were, between 2000 and 2012, also responsible for moving some $300 million of funding into Canada to support often illegal (and sometimes violent) obstruction campaigns opposing oil sands and pipeline development.

Sometime around five years ago, Tides Canada Foundation became uncomfortable maintaining such a close public relationship with their U.S. associates and changed their name to MakeWay.

Unlike many Canadian charities, MakeWay operates Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs), where donors contribute to a fund, advise on grants, and can choose anonymity when grants are made to other charities. This structure allows “pass-through” funding with donor privacy, similar to U.S. models. MakeWay explicitly allows donors to remain anonymous.

There are actually two Makeway organizations: MakeWay Foundation (MF) and MakeWay Charitable Society (MCS). They’re obviously connected, since they share the same Vancouver street address, directors, and trustees.

Between them, the two organizations reported a total of $74.8 million in revenue in 2024. MF spent just three million dollars (eight percent) of their earnings on charitable activities, while MCS spent 28 million dollars (70 percent).

Now just because MF spent only eight percent of their revenue directly on charitable activities, doesn’t mean the rest went to luxury cars, foreign villas, and cocaine. In fact, 83 percent of their revenues was transferred to “qualified donees”. Moving money back and forth between charities and other organizations is a common practice among Canadian charities.

While there may have been absolutely nothing illegal about those transfers, they make transparency nearly impossible.

Specifically, MF received $8.7 million from other registered charities and transferred $17.6 million to qualified donees. MCS received $21 million from other registered charities and donated $1.9 million to qualified donees.

As far as I can tell, there were no significant transfers directly between MF and MCS in 2024. So the $30 million in funds incoming and the $30 million in funds outgoing were directed to and from outside organizations.

So then who are those third-party recipients, and how was all that money spent?

We have public records from 2024 covering around $19 million worth of outbound transfers to a total of 102 recipients. The donations are split pretty much evenly ($9.5 million vs $10 million) between 57 Indigenous and 45 non-Indigenous organizations.

The largest recipient was the Veritas Foundation. In fact, MakeWay’s $2.2 million transfer to Veritas represented 48 percent of the total revenue received by Veritas during 2024.

Veritas, in turn, distributed 83 percent ($3,293,425) of their total expenditures to other “qualified donees”. By far the largest of those transfers ($2,727,247) went to The Aqueduct Foundation of Vancouver. That one, coincidentally, represented 83 percent of Veritas’ total donations.

The second largest outbound donation from Veritas (worth $175,000) was - whoops - sent back to MCS! I have no clue what was going on there.

Aqueduct Foundation seems to be some kind of hub for larger donations. Most of the million-dollar-and-up donations from their $206 million revenues for 2024 went to universities and hospitals. Why donors couldn’t have bypassed MakeWay and Veritas and simply donated directly to Aqueduct (or directly to their own favorite universities and hospitals) is a mystery hidden from all but very rich people.

Let’s get back to MakeWay. I’m certainly curious to know what kinds of programs were funded by the ten million dollars directed at Indigenous groups. But because published audited financial reports for Indigenous group activities can be hard to find, I’m afraid I have no insights into how all of that money is spent. However, the overwhelming majority of the other $7.2 million of 2024 (non-Veritas and non-Indigenous) spending went to causes engaged in environmental activism.

If by “activism”, we’re talking about publishing informational websites or creating educational material, then there’s no cause for complaint. “Advancement of education” is among the four pillars of acceptable charitable activities.

But if that money was ever used for funding demonstrations that obstructed legal construction projects or engaged in criminal mischief or criminal intimidation, then the funding charity could - and should - have its licence revoked.

Given the history of Tides-associated charitable contributions in Canada, that would be something worth knowing.

---

Looking for more?

1. It would be naive to imagine that such support isn’t being used to finance similar activities here in Canada.