What can we learn from the 2024 annual reports?

First, yes, we’ll have a post-byelection analysis episode soon. In the meantime, I thought I’d dig into the annual reports from every local elector organization (aka party) in the province. These came out on April 8, so unfortunately we couldn’t divine the byelection results from these but they’re still an interesting insight into the strength of these organizations.

Check out my 2023 Annual Report breakdowns for the City of Vancouver and rest of BC.

For this analysis, I’m excluding those parties that reported no donors in 2023. Some had cash in the bank but it was often a trivial amount.

For each party, I copied over their total assets, total liabilities and accumulated surplus from their balance sheet. These give a sense of the financial health of the organization. Basically, how much cash do they have in the bank (or could have if they sold any furniture they claim, though most assets were liquid). I also recorded their income, expenses and revenue. Plus the number of donors who gave $100 or more, the number who gave under $100 and the number of anonymous donors (ie those who gave under $50 to a collection box at an event).

Additionally, I’ve collapsed civic and school board returns into these columns. This may result in some small donors being counted twice. For example, you could give $99 to OneCity’s city council race and their school board race and appear as a donor twice but your name wouldn’t be reported.

You can access all the annual reports directly from Elections BC here.

Vancouver

Let’s start with Vancouver.

Both Progress Vancouver and Forward Together are now officially deregistered. This means we don’t have their annual reports but we can see their contribution data. Forward had 24 donors provide $17,248.45, while Progress had 25 donors provide $13,500.

First, the obvious. ABC dominated fundraising. They raised over half a million dollars in a non-election year. That’s more than all their rivals combined (even including the two deregistered parties). It’s down slightly from the $590,000 they raised in 2023 but it’s still an impressive haul.

Beyond that, OneCity showed a solid performance, which is unsurprising given their byelection result. TEAM and COPE raised similar amounts, though COPE had more than double the number of small donors. COPE also had over 500 anonymous donations, although this accounted for a mere $2200 in revenue (average $4 donation) so this is basically just pocked change collected from a large number of events.

The Greens were obviously struggling compared to the other parties that contested the byelection. They had fewer donors and raised less. So while they marginally improved over 2023, the trend was clear and the party’s byelection performance was basically foretold by the numbers.

Notably, despite its impressive fundraising, ABC’s bottom line was actually not significantly higher than its competitors. After its hefty expenses, the party only posted a net revenue of $53,000. OneCity and COPE nearly matched that with tighter operations. Digging into the income statement, we see ABC spent over $230,000 on “professional services,” another $65,000 on fundraising events, $35,000 on research and data, $28,000 on accountants, and $25,000 on IT. On the other hand, TEAM and the Greens were much harder done by, netting just under $30,000 each.

As a quick aside, you can probably tell the three other corpses on the local political scene: NPA, Vote Socialist and Vision Vancouver. It’s not surprising that the Socialists have largely disappeared here, given Sean Orr’s move to COPE. Similarly, Vision and NPA were soundly rejected by voters in 2022. Nevertheless, each of the parties had a few faithful donors but that wasn’t enough to keep any in the black.

Perhaps the most surprising graph though is the final one. Tallying up each party’s accumulated surplus, we see that OneCity had the healthiest account balance at the end of 2024. Over $120,000 in the bank, more than ABC’s $99,000. TEAM, COPE and the Greens each had modest war chests as well, with COPE slightly ahead of that pack. Compared to 2023, OneCity effectively doubled its reserves. Year-over-year, COPE did even better, increasing their balance from $15,000.

These numbers didn’t guarantee ABC’s loss. They still had a substantial number of donors, nearly as many as OneCity, and raised a boatload of cash (even if they spent a wild amount of it on contractors). We do still see OneCity and COPE’s strengths here, similar to 2023. We also see that TEAM and the Greens lack a deep well of support, even if TEAM has relatively generous supporters.

The next report to watch for will be the byelection fundraising and expense reports.

Outside Vancouver

Next, we’ll look at the fourteen parties outside Vancouver that reported donations in 2024. This includes the following parties (divided by municipality):

• A Better Maple Ridge. The party of Maple Ridge Mayor Dan Ruimy.
• Burnaby Citizens Association (BCA), Burnaby Greens and One Burnaby. BCA is the dominant force in Burnaby while the latter elected councillor Richard Lee.
• Community First, New Westminster Mayor Patrick Johnstone’s party, and the New Westminster Progressives, who elected two councilors.
• Contract for Langley. Township of Langley Mayor Eric Woodward’s party.
• Langley Together. A party in the City of Langley whose sole donor, Bert Chen, is also their financial agent who lives in Sidney.
• One Richmond, who elected two councillors; Richmond Community Coalition (RCC), who elected one councillor and RITE Richmond, who elected three councillors. Note that Richmond United and Richmond RISE (who both elected one councillor) did not report raising any money and Mayor Malcolm Brodie is an independent.
• ParentsVoice runs candidates for school boards and elected three in 2022.
• Safe Surrey Coalition was Doug McCallum’s party and has two current councilors. Surrey Connect is Mayor Brenda Locke’s party and has four councilors. Surrey First was Dianne Watts’ party and has two councilors.

In 2023, the money was in Surrey. Brenda Locke’s Surrey Connect raised over $300,000. In 2024, the money moved to Eric Woodward’s Contract with Langley as his party nearly doubled its fundraising.

Despite the fundraising slowdown, Surrey Connect remains one of the wealthiest political parties in the province (only Contract with Langley has more cash in its bank accounts). Notably, the main opposition Surrey First ran a deficit in 2024. Despite these numbers, Surrey First did edge out the mayor’s party in the number of donors.

New Westminster is the only municipality where the mayor, or dominant political force on council, is falling behind. This is the second year in a row that the (right-leaning) Progressives have out-fundraised the mayor’s (left-leaning) party. When you look at their donor base, however, it’s clear that the Progressives are relying on slightly more large donors than Community First.

In Burnaby, BCA remains strong, although One Burnaby posted similar income from slightly fewer donors. Notably, One Burnaby is sitting on a sizeable debt of almost $30,000.

Richmond remains a complicated place where the three parties each raised about $10,000, with the Community Coalition falling slightly behind. RCC is also in a tougher spot with the least total assets.

Finally, ParentsVoice reported 50 donations of $10 to its campaigns in 50 different school districts. It’s quite possible each of these was made by the same individual. In any case, the party ran a significant deficit and has a trivial amount of current assets.

Missing from 2024’s fundraising efforts was Delta Mayor George Harvie’s Achieving for Delta. The party is sitting on $32,000 in assets but raised no money and spent a mere $228 in 2024.