Pierre Duplessis, the Secretary General of the Canadian Red Cross, noted that, from
a business perspective, the numbers of nonprofit organizations have some weight
(Duplessis, 2000). The Canadian Centre for Philanthropy estimates that charities alone
account for approximately 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of Canada (Hall &
Banting, 2000), employ 1.4 million Canadians, and utilized 2 billion volunteer hours
(Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, 2004).