TL;DR: If you are in the UK or USA, and are planning to give to the Against Malaria Foundation, you can help a Canadian make their donation to a different effective organisation tax deductible. Please let us know in the comments so we can facilitate more of these swaps.
Unfortunately many charities people here may want to give to are not registered charities in Canada or Australia, as becoming registered there is challenging and the number of donors available in those countries is not as large as in the UK or USA.
Tides Canada, a 'fiscal sponsor', used to allow Canadians to make grants to charities in other countries, but for logistical reasons have not offered this service for a while.
However, there is a way Canadians can still make tax deductible donations by 'pairing off' with someone who is planning to give to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) in the US or UK. This takes advantage of the fact that AMF is directly tax-deductible in Canada.
- The donor in the UK or US who was going to give to AMF, instead gives to the charity the Canadian wishes to give to.
- The Canadian donor gives the same amount to AMF instead.
Would it still be completely legal if there was a more automatic and markety way of organizing this, such as certificates of impact? At what point does a system of exchange become too much like money and hence taxable?
I'm curious about the legality as well. Scaling up something like this as an online platform could have huge value, but I would also guess that governments wouldn't like it. Maybe this is why such a service doesn't appear to exist yet.