New Guidance On CASL's Charitable Fundraising Exception

Our previous post about Canada's pending anti-spam legislation (CASL) mentioned a key exception for charities: commercial electronic messages that are sent by a registered charity and whose primary purpose is to raise funds for that charity are fully exempt from CASL.

However, there are some questions around that exception's scope. First, what is required to make a message's "primary purpose" the raising of funds?

Second, what does CASL mean by "raising funds", and is that the same as the Canada Revenue Agency's definition of "fundraising"? CRA's Fundraising by Charities Guidance Document CG-013 states: "As a general rule, fundraising is any activity that includes a solicitation of present or future donations of cash or gifts in kind, or the sale of goods or services to raise funds, whether explicit or implied."