Case studies · Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories
Ninety-nine charities, five revocations, and two of them were never here.
The whole territory, one riding, under the Societies Act. 99 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
The Act sends what is left to the members. A church sent it to the town.
What the sector looks like here.
The Northwest Territories is one riding, larger than most countries and, for the purposes of this case study, mostly Yellowknife, and its ninety-nine registered charities are a small sector that is top-heavy. Twenty-three organizations, nearly one in four, run on over $2 million, and the median charity runs on $311,000. The territory is not rich; the bodies that deliver health, housing, education and community services under government contract are registered here as charities. Thirty-three per cent run on under $150,000, and only six on under $25,000.
Religion is the largest group, thirty-seven of the ninety-nine. That is the mark of a territory of many small mission congregations, and of a diocese with its head office in Yellowknife that registers every parish in the eastern Arctic under its own number. Community benefit is next, then education, then relief of poverty. Eleven per cent of boards have three members or fewer, and the median board has seven.
The economy is the mines', and the mines are closing. Diavik closed in March 2026, and the territory's own release said it had supported more than 1,100 jobs a year and nearly a tenth of the territory's output; the others are scheduled to follow. At the budget in February officials said that the economy is shrinking, and the debt is projected at $2.21 billion.
Underneath that, the sector's money runs year to year. In November 2025 Yellowknife's homelessness organizations told city hall that a two-year funding commitment had been transformative, and that for some of them it was the first time in their history they had been funded for more than a year at once. In April 2026 many organizations' federal commitments sunset on 31 March, and one director said it was extremely difficult to plan under that. This sector bore much of the response to the 2023 wildfires: United Way NWT raised $3.3 million and put $2.3 million of it into more than 130 grants, and said afterward that it could not easily fill its emergency fund again.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $311,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags eight charities, eight per cent, a little under Canada's nine, and five of them run on under $150,000. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Fewer than five have the stronger flag.
Five registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, and in a sector this size the split between the reasons is a name, so this case study does not print it. Two of the five were never here. One is a parish in another territory that files under the number of the Anglican Diocese of the Arctic, whose office is in Yellowknife; one is a national body whose Gazette address is Ottawa, matched to this territory by the postal code on its file. A third is a public education body that held a charity number and let it lapse, which is bookkeeping. Fewer of the five belong to the territory than the count suggests.
Beside the CRA's five is the Registrar's own list. Under section 27 of the Societies Act a society that goes two years without filing its financial statements and its list of directors is struck off, on ninety days' notice, and the notice the Registrar published runs to five pages: hunters' and trappers' committees, minor hockey, ski clubs, historical societies, parent committees, mission churches. Revival afterward is by the court alone. That list, not the Gazette, is where the territory's closures are recorded, and most of them were never decided by anyone.
What an ending looks like here.
A society in the Northwest Territories ends under section 26 of the Societies Act by its members' extraordinary resolution, three-quarters of those voting, and a package to the Registrar of Societies: the resolution, a director's declaration that the assets are gone and no debts remain, the original certificate of incorporation, no fee. The Act itself sends what is left to the members or to whoever is entitled by law. It is the Income Tax Act, which applies everywhere, that sends a charity's last property to charity.
Yellowknife has done it in public, and the clearest example is a church. Holy Family Lutheran, close to fifty years in the city, held its last service in its chapel in Northern United Place on 18 December 2022, saying that the size of its congregation could no longer be sustained, and closed on the thirty-first. That same week it gave its remaining $101,000 to the Yellowknife Community Foundation to found a legacy fund, for homelessness, food, family violence and the people at the margins of the city, with grants every year to organizations that apply; the congregation said it had done so that its mission would live on after its small church was closed. The Gazette printed the end of its registration in March 2023. The Act would have let the money go to the members. It went to the town.
The other closure was decided in Ottawa and Yellowknife together, by a body that was national and whose whole subject was the North. The Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, founded in 1971 against the Mackenzie Valley pipeline and through the Berger inquiry, announced in February 2021, after fifty years, that it had fulfilled its mission and would cease. Its own account was that organizations have a tendency to keep going; that it had looked at what it had accomplished and at who was now best placed to shape decisions in the Arctic, with northerners having regained so much control of their lands and governance; and that it had decided others were better placed, and stepped aside. Its last work was a book, published free; its records went to an archive at Laurier; its registration ended at its own request in October 2023, two and a half years after the decision. A proper wind-down often takes that long. What is rare, in any record, is an organization that judged its purpose met.
Who sits on the boards.
Thirty-two organizations, one in three, share a director with another, through twenty-five people; no one sits on more than three boards, and only one sits on three. Drawn out, it looks like a small capital's network: a wide ring of people on exactly two, and no hub.
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 Northwest Territories, closing together would mean every board that is deciding in one room, in a sector built on contracts in an economy that is contracting.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards from Yellowknife and the communities 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 community 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. When the last of them has closed, the territory keeps the method.
The congregation and the committee named in this case study ended by their own decision and said so in public, and are 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 NWT, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in NWT 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.
- Holy Family Lutheran held its last service on 18 December 2022, closed on the thirty-first, and had its legacy fund open at the community foundation the same week. Thirty-seven charities file under religion here. Which of the territory's other small congregations are one winter behind it, and who has sat with them?
- The Canadian Arctic Resources Committee decided in February 2021 that its purpose was achieved and that others were better placed to carry it, and its registration ended in October 2023, two and a half years later, with its records in an archive and its last book published. Which organization here was founded for a purpose that has since been met, and has said so out loud?
- Two of the five revocations matched to this territory belong to organizations that were not here, a parish in another territory filing under a diocese's number, and a national body with an Ottawa address. Which of your neighbours are registered under someone else's number, and what happens to their local work if that number changes?
- Diavik closed in March 2026 and took nearly a tenth of the territory's output with it; the median charity here runs on $311,000 and a quarter run on over $2 million, most of it contracts. Which boards have asked what their organization looks like at half that, and which have written the answer down?
- The Registrar's notice of societies to be struck off for two years without filings runs to five pages, and revival afterward is by the court alone. Which of the smallest boards in the territory, the ten with three members or fewer, have a person whose job it is to file, and who covers for that person when they leave town?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in the Northwest Territories.
A charity in the Northwest Territories 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, Northwest Territories 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 The North.
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: Cabin Radio on Holy Family Lutheran Church's final service and legacy fund, December 2022; Yellowknife Community Foundation on the Holy Family Lutheran Legacy Fund, December 2022; Cabin Radio on the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee winding down after fifty years, February 2021; Laurier Archives, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee fonds; Canada Gazette, Part I, 7 October 2023, revocations at the charity's request; Registrar of Societies, notice of intent to dissolve under section 27 of the Societies Act; GNWT Justice, non-profit societies; CBC North on multi-year funding for Yellowknife's homelessness organizations, November 2025; CBC North on federal funding sunsetting for NWT organizations, April 2026; United Way NWT, February 2024 update on the 2023 emergency response program; Cabin Radio on the 2026-27 territorial budget, February 2026; GNWT on the closure of the Diavik mine, March 2026.
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.