Case studies · The community foundations
Where the money goes when a charity ends.
The receiving end: the foundations that hold a closed charity's memorial fund, its building's proceeds, its name. 240 registrations that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
Two hundred foundations built to receive: the sector's successor of last resort.
What the sector looks like here.
As a group, the 240 community foundations on the register are not at risk. Their national body counts 206 members and $8 billion held in trust for the communities that built them; the first, in Winnipeg, was founded in 1921 and now holds $2.6 billion in five thousand funds, a hundred and sixty-four million of it on behalf of the province's other foundations. Vancouver's holds $1.8 billion, Calgary's $1.5 billion, Edmonton's a billion, Montreal's and Toronto's half a billion each. Together the 240 report $2.3 billion in a year, most of it gifts received and investment return on capital that is never spent.
Beneath the six large ones the sector is a small-town institution. The Prairies have a third of the registrations, Manitoba alone fifty-six outside Winnipeg sharing forty-seven staff among them; Ontario has a quarter, British Columbia a fifth. The median foundation runs on $715,000 a year, but twenty-two per cent run on under $150,000 and twenty-five on under $25,000, a foundation that is a bank account, a board, and a plan. Sixty-six run on over $2 million. The board is ten by the median, and 127 of them have ten or more; six per cent have three or fewer, which in a town of two thousand is the foundation at its founding or at its last meeting, and the record does not say which.
The purpose on the return is community benefit on nine in ten, and the form is a public foundation: it holds endowed funds, named for a family, a business, a closed church, a hospital auxiliary that gave up its registration, and grants the income to the charities of its district forever. A community foundation is the place a community keeps what it does not want to lose.
By annual revenue
By region
Region follows the riding a registration's mailing address falls in; 6 could not be assigned. Median revenue is $715,000 and the whole body reports $2.34 billion; the median board has 10 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags eleven of the 240, under five per cent, half the national rate. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration, and six of the eleven are the small ones. A foundation's return is an investment statement with grants beneath it, and the flags are in the smallest places, not the cities.
The register shows six community foundations ended since 2019, and this case study does not say how many by choice, because the parts are too small to print without naming them. Sixteen have ended since 2011. Set that against the whole sector's year: 916 charities surrendered their registration by choice in the CRA's last reporting year and 1,146 lost it for failing to file, and a Carleton study counts public foundations down by nearly four hundred over ten years. The strain in this case study is in everything around the foundations.
Every one of those two thousand charities had a last balance, and the Act gives a closing charity one year from the notice of revocation to move what is left to another charity at arm's length, or pay all of it in tax. The community foundation is the charity built to receive it: a fund in the closed organization's name, its income granted in the district it served, its principal kept. The record cannot count how many of the two thousand named the foundation and how many let the year run out, and no return says whether the call, where there was one, came before the decision or after it.
Revocations on the record, by year
Revocations published in the Canada Gazette, matched by name, 2011 to 5 September 2026. 16 in all.
What an ending looks like here.
A community foundation is often where a closing charity's money goes. The Thomas Sill Foundation in Winnipeg chose to wind down after thirty-six years and $46 million in grants, and in December 2023 it put what remained into endowment funds at community foundations across Manitoba, more than a million dollars in unrestricted money to Winkler's alone and the largest share to a fund at The Winnipeg Foundation that grants every year to the rural ones. The foundation decided, named its successors, moved the capital inside the year, and closed in order. Its name is on those funds. It is what the Guide means by an honourable closure.
The mechanism is short. A charity that has decided to close passes the motion, gives its notice, receives the CRA's letter, and has a year. In that year it may give what it holds to a registered charity at arm's length, and a community foundation is one, and will hold the gift as a fund in the giver's name if the giver asks. Past the year, the revocation tax is the whole of what is left. Toronto's foundation writes it down for private foundations thinking of succession, and says, carefully, that its role is not to encourage anyone to dissolve. Every other charity that closes faces the same year, and a community foundation can receive what it has left, whether or not the closing board knows it.
Who sits on the boards.
Two hundred and thirty boards and fewer than five people in common. The foundations are the most independent boards on the register, which is the point of a foundation, and it means the one kind of body built to receive what a closing charity leaves has no seat on the boards that will need it.
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.
A community foundation is a natural host for this work. It already holds the funds of closed churches, auxiliaries, and service clubs; its board knows every organization in the district and which of them are quiet; it is trusted by the funders who would pay for boards to close together and by the boards who would come; and it cannot be accused of wanting anything for itself, because what it receives it keeps for the district forever.
The foundation itself, or another healthy charity with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, would host the boards closing together, and the first organizations invited would come from the foundation's own list: the ones whose treasurers have asked, in passing, what happens to a memorial fund if the organization is not there. Each would pass a motion naming a coordinator from among its own people, and take a Toolkit licence at no cost where the decision to close has been taken. The Toolkit's pages would set the year beside the calendar: the motion, the notice, the CRA's letter, the transfer, the fund agreement, the final return, in order, with the foundation named on the first page instead of the last.
If you sit on a community foundation's board and have taken a call from a charity that had already ended, you know what this case study is asking. We would value the conversation. Start a conversation.
Roundtables · the community of practice, in one room
Come and correct us.
A day or an evening with the organizations of the foundation's own district, hosted by the foundation itself.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders from the organizations of the foundation's own district 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 the foundation itself, 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.
- Nine hundred and sixteen charities gave up their registration by choice in the CRA's last year and 1,146 lost it for failing to file. How many of the ones in a region moved their remaining assets to the community foundation, and how many left them to the revocation tax?
- A community foundation can receive a closing charity's fund only as an eligible donee, at arm's length, inside the one-year winding-up period. Which foundations in a region have a standing offer to receive a closed charity's money as a named fund, and which have said so in public?
- The Thomas Sill Foundation chose to wind down and put its capital into community foundations across Manitoba. Which foundations, operating charities, or congregations in a region have told a community foundation that they are deciding, before the vote?
- Twenty-five community foundations run on under $25,000, in towns where they are the newest charity and the one with the fewest volunteers. Which of the small foundations are themselves one resignation from a lapse, and who would receive their funds?
- A community foundation's board has seen every kind of closure in its district and has usually been asked after the fact. Which foundation would host boards closing together, and which organizations would its board invite first?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization, wherever it is incorporated.
Each organization in this case study is incorporated in a province or territory, or federally, and it closes under that statute first and under the Income Tax Act second. The two have an order, and no government page sets it out.
The Critical Path is that order on one folded sheet, one edition per jurisdiction: 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. Each edition will come as part of Foundations, with the Guide and access to the Foundations Course. Foundations is in development.
The other national bodies.
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.
This body's registrations are picked out by name. A few without the words in their legal name are missed, and unrelated bodies that share them are excluded by hand, so the count is close but not exact. Regions follow the riding of the mailing address, and 22 of Canada's 343 ridings are not yet in the 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: Community Foundations of Canada, the local community foundations (206 members); Community Foundations of Canada, pre-budget submission 2026 ($8 billion in collective capital and assets); The Winnipeg Foundation, 2025 annual report (Canada's first, 1921; $2.6 billion; 5,097 funds); Endow Manitoba, impact (56 community foundations outside Winnipeg); CRA, revocation tax and the T2046 return (the winding-up period; eligible donees); CRA, report on the Charities Program 2024 to 2025 (revocations by reason); Pembina Valley Online on the Thomas Sill Foundation's wind-down and its gifts to Manitoba's community foundations, 2024; Toronto Foundation, private foundation succession.
Sources: CRA List of Charities and T3010 returns, 2011 to 2024; Canada Gazette, Part I, revocations 2019 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.