Case studies · Brandon and Provencher
Seven hundred charities in Westman and the Southeast.
Rural southern Manitoba, from the Saskatchewan border to the Ontario one. 763 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
Small towns, long roads, and boards that have known each other for fifty years.
What the sector looks like here.
Brandon–Souris and Provencher are Westman and the Southeast to the people who live there: the Wheat City and the farm towns around it in the one, Steinbach and the Mennonite country east of the Red in the other. Between them they have 763 registered charities. The median charity runs on $100,000, fifty-eight per cent run on under $150,000, and two hundred run on under $25,000.
Religion is the largest group. Many of the Mennonite, Ukrainian Catholic, Lutheran, and United congregations of a hundred small towns are the last organization in town with a building and a board, and some of them, this year, have no minister to fill the pulpit. Community benefit is close behind. Seventeen per cent of boards have three members or fewer.
Brandon–Souris has three charities in five; Provencher has the rest. Brandon itself has grown by five thousand people in two years, most of them newcomers, and the Southeast is said to give at a higher rate than anywhere in the country.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $100,000; the median board has 6 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags fifty-nine charities, eight per cent, under Canada's nine. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Thirty of the fifty-nine run on under $150,000, and eight have the stronger flag.
Thirty registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, four in a hundred over four years. Eleven were voluntary: a board decided, filed, and closed. Nineteen were for failing to file. We do not name them. Westman has seen what a chosen closure looks like: Elgin United held its last service in December 2025, and the 120-year-old church is for sale, with people driving out to see it one more time. The congregation decided, closed in order, and told the newspaper itself.
The boards are joined through many people rather than a few. Two hundred and twelve people sit on two or more boards, with nobody on more than seven: a wide web of people on two and three boards each, with no denominational structure linking a dozen at once. Steinbach's organizations say it themselves. They survive on volunteers, and it is the same volunteers every time.
What an ending looks like here.
The successor is in the next town and the counsel is in Winnipeg or Brandon, an hour or three away. The usual closure here is a prairie one: a congregation or a hall that has served a town whose population peaked in 1961, run by a board whose members have known each other for fifty years and would rather not be the ones to decide.
Who sits on the boards.
Two hundred and twenty-seven organizations share a director with another, through 212 people, none on more than seven boards. A wide, even web: the connections are spread across many people rather than concentrated in a few.
Bubbles are organizations, coloured by purpose and sized by revenue band. Dots are people who sit on two or more of these boards. Drag to move, scroll to zoom, click to see one organization's connections, click the background to clear. No one is named: the shape is public, the people are not.
The work
What we would do here.
In Westman and the Southeast, closing together would mean boards from the Wheat City, the farm towns, and the Mennonite country working from one Toolkit, under a host from one of the two ridings.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards that have decided to close, or are deciding, to close together. Each organization that joins passes a board motion naming a coordinator from its own town and takes its own Toolkit licence, at no cost where the board has already decided to wind down. Public Benefit brings the method, the binder, the training, and support by phone. The method stays in Westman and the Southeast.
The one congregation named in this case study ended by its own decision and said so in public, and is named for that. We do not use the model to approach anyone. A board that recognizes itself here can start the conversation.
Roundtables · the community of practice, in one room
Come and correct us.
A day or an evening in Brandon, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Brandon together for a day or an evening to go over this case study, correct it, and work out what the charities near them are facing. It is hosted by a healthy local charity with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, and a sponsor helps defray the cost. Within the month we send a report in the room's own words, and the corrections this case study owes are made and dated in the correction log. How a roundtable works, and who provides what.
What we will ask at the roundtable.
- Elgin United held its last service in December 2025 and the 120-year-old church is for sale. Which of Westman's rural pulpits are empty this year, and which congregations have already decided without saying so?
- Steinbach and Winkler are said to give at a higher rate than anywhere in the country. Does that giving reach the small organizations of the Southeast, or only the ones people already know?
- Steinbach's organizations say they survive on volunteers and it is the same people every time. Which boards are the same five people, and what happens the year one of them moves to Winnipeg?
- Brandon added five thousand people in two years, most of them newcomers. Which of the Wheat City's organizations serve them, and which are still built for the town of 2019?
- Two hundred and twelve people sit on two or more boards here and nobody on more than seven. Do they know each other, and would closing together be the first time they were in one room?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Manitoba.
A charity in Manitoba closes twice: once under The Corporations Act, Part XXII, which governs the corporation, and once under the Income Tax Act, which governs the registration. The two have an order, and no government page sets it out.
The Critical Path, Manitoba edition, is that order on one folded sheet: each step from the first hard conversation to the last filing, who decides it, and the document it files, with its regulator, its fee, and a specimen of its first page. This case study is printed inside it. It will come as part of Foundations, with the Guide and access to the Foundations Course. Foundations is in development.
Also in Prairies.
How this case study was made.
Public data, and math. The full method brief.
The counts are arithmetic on three public files: the Canada Revenue Agency's list of charities and their annual returns, 2011 to 2024; the Canada Gazette's notices of revocation; and Elections Canada's postal code file, which places a mailing address in a riding. A "flag" is the mark our model, Canary v3 / Distress v3, puts on a charity whose filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost registration. It is a weak signal and we say so: about 1.4 in a hundred charities lose their registration within three years, about 2.9 in a hundred flagged ones do, and the rest carry on. We use flags to count, never to approach anyone.
A mailing address is not a service area, and 22 of Canada's 343 ridings are not yet in the postal-code crosswalk. Where a count is under five, we print "fewer than five", so that no organization can be picked out of it. The method brief has the model's validation, the counting rules, and the limits in full.
Local record, as reported: CTV on Elgin United Church, 120 years, for sale; CBC on rural Manitoba pulpit vacancies; SteinbachOnline, 'we survive on volunteers'; City of Brandon on population and housing growth, 2025; Brandon Area Community Foundation.
Sources: CRA List of Charities and T3010 returns, 2011 to 2024; Canada Gazette, Part I, revocations 2022 to 2025; Elections Canada, 2023 representation order. Model: Canary v3 / Distress v3, 1 July 2026; out-of-time AUC 0.68; flag precision 2.5 to 3.3 per cent. Counting script: case-study.py; the riding-level counts it produces: case-studies-aggregate.csv. The organization-level score file is available to a reviewer under a data agreement, and the method paper on request. If you find an error in the counting, write to info@publicbenefit.ca; we will correct the case study and record it in the correction log.