Toronto Community Foundation would have issued the receipts. Rob talks about it as if it's his charity, but in actual fact it's a donor-advised fund administered by the TCF (although the name of the fund includes the word foundation, which is confusing). This type of fund is fairly common for community foundations to administer, because often people want to support a favourite cause but they don't want the hassle of setting up their own charity. So in a nutshell, Rob hits up his buddies for donations, they make out their cheques to the TCF, TCF issues receipts, Rob has a say in where the money goes. TCF would take an admin fee, and there would be signed agreements to protect both donors and TCF. Rob doesn't benefit directly, because he doesn't get a tax break unless he also makes a donation to the fund (I'm sure he does), but he is hitting up his buddies (and pretty much everyone he meets based on his testimony) and gives them his Mayor Ford business card. He likes to talk about it being a personal issue, but he is mixing personal and business -- city staff were stuffing envelopes at one time, he used city letterhead, etc. And then there's the question of whether or not lobbyists might think their cause would be better served after they donated to the Mayor's pet project.
