Case studies · Northwestern Ontario
Six hundred charities, a region the size of France.
Three ridings, from the Manitoba border to Marathon. 622 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
What is true here is true in three hundred other ridings.
What the sector looks like here.
The Northwest, which is what people here call the three districts of Kenora, Rainy River, and Thunder Bay, is a region the size of France with the population of a mid-sized city, and its 622 registered charities are mostly small. Half run on less than $150,000 a year. A fifth of their boards have three members or fewer, which is the minimum to hold a meeting and one resignation away from not being able to.
Two in five are congregations, and that is the shape of the region. In Nestor Falls, Marathon, Geraldton, or Red Lake, the church is often the last organization in town with a building, a bank account, and a board, and it is the one that runs the food bank, the hall, and the funeral lunch. After religion, the largest group is what the CRA calls community benefit: the hospital foundations, the arenas, the cultural societies, and the friendship centres. Relief of poverty and education follow.
The money is concentrated where the people are. The two Lakehead ridings have most of the organizations over $2 million. Kenora–Kiiwetinoong, with the largest territory and the most communities, has the fewest large charities and the most small ones.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $140,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags forty-four organizations here, seven per cent of those scored, against nine for Canada as a whole. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Northwestern Ontario is not the most strained region in the country. It is a typical one, which is why it is a fair one to read: what is true here is true in three hundred other ridings.
Strain in this region is a small-organization story. Twenty-nine of the forty-four run on under $150,000 a year: the volunteer treasurer who is also the secretary, the grant that paid for the program but not the person who runs it, the reserve drawn down one winter at a time. The filings show it before the community does. Five organizations have the model's stronger flag, the one it reserves for filings that look like the last few years before a closure.
The register shows what strain becomes when nobody decides. Twenty-one registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025. Eight were voluntary: a board chose to close, filed the papers, and closed in order. Thirteen were for failing to file. An organization that stops filing has usually already stopped meeting; the register noticed before the town did, and whatever was in the bank account went where the law sends it rather than where the founders would have chosen. We do not name those thirteen. Most were congregations in small communities, and the people who kept them going for as long as they did deserve better than a list.
What an ending looks like here.
Distance shapes every closure here. Charity counsel is in Toronto or Winnipeg. The organization that could take over a program may be four hours away by road, or may be the one down the street that the board has never spoken to.
The same public record shows how connected the region already is, in ways the boards may not see. One hundred and seventy-nine people sit on two or more boards. Charities here gave one another $29.3 million in the 2024 filings, almost exactly what came in from outside, while only $4.8 million went out. The money and the need are in the same three ridings, and the people on each side often do not know each other.
One board in Thunder Bay used that connection. The final return of Crossroads Centre Inc. shows a gift of $2.2 million to St. Joseph's Care Group, and its registration was revoked at its own request on 11 May 2024: the assets and the cause placed with the people who would continue them, and the doors closed on purpose, in order, by a board that decided. Every part of that is on the public record because a board of volunteers did the hardest thing in this sector well. Compare that with the thirteen registrations that lapsed for want of a filing. The Guide and this practice exist to help more boards close the first way.
Who sits on the boards.
The record shows how the region's boards are already joined. Denominational structures form the spines, one person on ten parish boards from Balmertown to Schreiber; beneath them is a thinner civic layer of volunteers on three and four boards across education, religion, poverty and community. Remarkably few people hold most of the region's board seats, and the picture suggests, though it cannot prove, that few of them know how many others are doing the same.
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.
Northwestern Ontario is where the practice is based and where the method was proved. Boards closing together here would begin with a host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch.
The host invites the boards that have decided to close, or are deciding. A small number of organizations, most of them in the $30,000 to $500,000 band where the flags concentrate, each pass a board motion naming a coordinator from their own community and take their 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 a phone number to call at anxious moments. When the last of them has closed, the knowledge stays in the region rather than leaving with a consultant.
The only organization named in this case study is one whose closure is complete and on the record, and it is named because its board did it well. 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 Northwestern Ontario, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Northwestern Ontario 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.
- Which of the region's boards with three members or fewer are one resignation from not being able to meet, and do they know it?
- The record shows the money and the need in the same three ridings. Which funders and which small organizations have never sat in the same room?
- Of the thirteen registrations that lapsed for want of a filing, how many communities noticed, and what happened to the building and the bank account?
- The hospital foundation's 50/50 has changed how the Lakehead gives. What has that done to the small organizations that used to get the cheque?
- Which congregations up the north shore and in the Kenora district are the last organization in town, and who is their successor if they close?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Ontario.
A charity in Ontario closes twice: once under the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, 2010, 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, Ontario 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 Ontario.
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: Kenora and Lake of the Woods Regional Community Foundation, 2025 to 2028 plan; CBC on Thunder Bay's 50/50 draws and non-profit funding, 2025.
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.