Case studies · Grande Prairie and Lakeland
The resource-town north.
The Peace Country and the north-east of Alberta. 622 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
A sector that grew with the boom and has to outlast it.
What the sector looks like here.
Grande Prairie and Lakeland are the two ridings that take in the Peace Country in Alberta's northwest and the Lakeland in its northeast, Bonnyville, St. Paul, and Lac La Biche, and between them they have 622 registered charities, a young sector that grew with the resource economy. The median charity runs on $89,000; fifty-nine per cent run on under $150,000 and 163 on under $25,000. Grande Prairie, GP to the people who live there, passed seventy thousand people in 2024 and is growing three per cent a year.
Religion is the largest group and community benefit next: the congregations of towns that doubled in a boom, and the rodeo grounds, agricultural societies, and recreation boards that came with them. Lakeland, the larger territory, has three charities in five; the Grande Prairie riding has the rest.
Seventeen per cent of boards have three members or fewer, and since February 2025, when the Peace's volunteer centre closed after more than fifty years, there has been no one in the region whose job it is to find them members.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $89,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags forty-seven 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. Twenty-eight of the forty-seven run on under $150,000, and fewer than five have the stronger flag.
Twenty-five registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, four in a hundred over four years. Six were voluntary: a board decided, filed, and closed. Nineteen were for failing to file, which is what usually happens when an organization has already stopped meeting. We do not name them. In a sector this young, most were built for a population or a program that moved on before the board did.
This year's strain in the local record is money that moved rather than organizations that ended. The province shifted its funding from prevention to intervention; one society lost nine tenths of its budget; the shelter that had been running at 113 per cent of capacity closed its transitional housing in April. None of those was the sector's choice.
What an ending looks like here.
Distance is the first problem. Edmonton is four and a half hours from GP, and the counsel is in Edmonton. The successor for a program may be the organization in the next town, in a region where the next town is an hour away.
The typical closure here is of an organization built for a boom. It was founded for a population that has since moved on, or for a funding program that has since moved on, in a town whose economy decides how many volunteers it has this year. Nineteen registrations lapsed in four years without a decision, and each of them was once a board that meant to keep going.
Who sits on the boards.
One hundred and sixty-three organizations share a director with another. One structure, a denominational or municipal body rather than a person, appears on thirty-nine of them; beneath it the web is thin, people on two boards each. One reading is that a young sector has not had time to grow the layer of people who sit everywhere. The filings show the thinness; they do not say why.
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 the Peace and the Lakeland, closing together would mean boards from towns hours apart working from one Toolkit, in a sector that is young and tied to a single economy.
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 the Peace Country.
Nothing in this case study names a living organization, and 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 Grande Prairie, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Grande Prairie 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.
- GP's volunteer centre closed in February 2025 after more than fifty years. Who is matching volunteers to boards in the Peace now, and what has happened to the boards that depended on it?
- The shelter ran at 113 per cent and its transitional housing closed this April after a provincial cut. Which of the organizations built to deliver the province's shift from prevention to intervention have a plan for the next shift?
- Swan City has grown three per cent a year since 2021. Which organizations are built for the town of 2015, and which of them know it?
- One structure here appears on thirty-nine boards. Beneath it the web is thin. Which of the Lakeland's halls, ag societies, and congregations have no one on their board who also sits on another?
- The Peace and the Lakeland share a riding pair and little else. Would boards from Bonnyville and St. Paul sit in the same room as boards from GP and the County, and who could host it?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Alberta.
A charity in Alberta closes twice: once under the Societies Act, 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, Alberta 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: My Grande Prairie Now on GP-RAVO closing after fifty years, 2025; CBC on the Grande Prairie shelter and its transitional housing, 2026; EverythingGP on the city passing 70,000; Northwestern Alberta Foundation, Vital Signs.
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.