Policy on donations

There are many causes that are worthy of financial support. But at National Bank we’ve decided help those organizations active in the fields of health, education, community development and the arts. We do on occasion consider applications coming from other sectors of activity, especially the environment.

Our rigorous selection process is governed by our policy on donations which serves as the basis for evaluating the applications we’ve received. This process was designed to provide the greatest fairness and transparency possible, as well as maximizing community benefits.

Eligibility criteria
Exclusions
Donations management
Allocation of donations
Types of donations
Application for financial support

Eligibility criteria

For the Bank to consider it, your application must satisfy the following two criteria:

• come from a non-profit organization that is registered as a Charity by the Canada Revenue Agency;
• address National Bank’s priority sectors, as described in the donations section.

Exclusions

At National Bank, we sincerely believe that all non-profit organizations deserve to be supported. Unfortunately however, as sincere as they may be, we cannot fund all the requests that are sent to us. To standardize our approach, the policy we’ve chosen is to exclude the following types of requests:

• organizations that are not registered under the federal law;
• organizations receiving financial support from Centraide/ United Way;
• provincial campaign by an organization that we already support at the national level;
• social clubs;
• political parties, political organizations or interest groups that espouse a political ideology;
• special-interest and lobbying groups;
• individual projects;
• private foundations;
• projects taking place outside Canada;
• conferences or annual reunions;
• audio, video or Web productions.

Donations management

To be fair and transparent, National Bank has set up a Donations Committee and has adopted a set of formal selection criteria. This allows us to structure the selection and management of all corporate donations that we make.

We apply these criteria to all eligible requests, and the selection of organizations that receive financial support is based on those criteria. The Bank considers the following elements:

• nature of the request and financial objective of the campaign;
• history of donations already made to the requesting organization;
• value of our commitments in the requesting organization’s sector;
• analysis of comparable donations made in the same sector;
• commitment of our employees to that cause or organization.

Allocation of donations

To allow for the greatest possible number and variety of organizations, the Bank has established an allocation procedure that is based on the following principles:

• only one financial contribution to any one organization in a given year;
• a donation cannot exceed 1 % of the financial objective of the campaign;
• the donation can be paid out in a one or more payments;
• donations are not automatically renewed from year-to-year and each new request has to be submitted for evaluation.

Types of donations

The majority of National Bank’s contributions to organizations may be of a financial nature, but donations can sometimes take another form.

- Donations of equipment

From time to time, National Bank is happy to donate furniture and equipment that it is no longer using. As with financial contributions, only those registered non-profit organizations working in the health, community-development, education and arts sectors are admissible.

- In-branch fund-raising campaign

As part of its commitment to community, the Bank sometimes makes its branch network available to organizations that satisfy its donations-policy criteria.

This type of initiative can be done at the provincial or national level to support a major cause that touches the communities in which the Bank has a presence. In these cases, a fund-raising activity can take place in all branches once a year, for up to five years.

On a local or regional basis, regional marketing personnel may decide to allow an organization the use of one or more Bank branches for a fund-raising campaign. The organization however, has to be able to manage the entire activity.

- Responding to urgent needs

In addition to concerted action and our donations program, National Bank’s in-branch fund raising efforts have been put to use to relieve urgent humanitarian needs and support on-the-ground operations of the Canadian Red Cross.

A fund-raising campaign that was set up to aid the Haitian community following the January 2010 earthquake is a fine example of the solidarity and compassion that motivates National Bank employees and customers. This unprecedented mobilization resulted in $1.3 million collected within the space a few short weeks.