Case studies · Iqaluit and Nunavut
Thirty-five charities, and a count that is a name.
The whole territory, one riding, and a sector too small to count without naming. 35 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
The Gazette here prints beginnings. Closures are decided in a room.
What the sector looks like here.
Nunavut is one riding, twenty-five communities and a fifth of Canada's land, and it has thirty-five registered charities. Twenty-three of them are in Iqaluit and the rest are in seven other communities. This case study says little about them, on purpose. In a sector this size a count is a name. Where a number is under five it is not printed, and where a number could be worked out from the others, those are not printed either. What is left is the shape.
The shape is a territory's institutions and its Inuit organizations, mostly funded through federal and territorial agreements, with a small ring of congregations and community groups around them. Twelve organizations run on over $2 million and between them they report nineteen dollars in every twenty; one of them, a public college, is half the money on its own. The median charity runs on $323,000, for that reason and no other. Thirty-seven per cent run on under $150,000. Community benefit is the largest group, then religion and education in equal measure, then relief of poverty. The median board has seven members.
The money is Ottawa's. Seventy cents of every dollar the territorial government spends is a federal transfer, and its budget for this year runs a $169 million deficit. The program several of the sector's organizations run on, the Inuit Child First Initiative, expired in March 2025, was extended for a year, and in February 2026 was extended for one more year six weeks before the money would have stopped, on terms that no longer pay salaries; one organization said it was four-fifths of its funding. The sector's own association, formed in 2021, asked its members about cash in 2023: of the nineteen that answered, most had had a contribution arrive late, most had borrowed from another fund to cover it, and nearly half had gone unpaid themselves. Meanwhile the public housing list, in a territory where three in five people live in public housing, grew to 3,713 households this March.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $323,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
Fewer than five charities are flagged by the model, and none has the stronger flag. Fewer than five registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025. That is all the count can say about strain here.
The Gazette here prints beginnings. The Nunavut Gazette recorded forty-one societies incorporated between 2022 and 2024 and, in the thirty-nine monthly issues read for this case study, not one dissolved. There is no societies register to search online; a request goes to Legal Registries by email. The CRA's record is nearly as quiet, and what little it says has to be read with care: one Iqaluit registration printed as revoked in 2012 is filing again under the same number today, which shows how little a notice can mean on its own. Closures in Nunavut are decided in a room, and most of them are never printed anywhere.
What an ending looks like here.
A society in Nunavut ends under section 26 of the Societies Act, an old Northwest Territories text carried into the territory in 1999 and never rewritten: the members pass an extraordinary resolution, three-quarters of those voting at a meeting called for it; a director swears a statutory declaration that the assets are gone and nothing is owed; the resolution, the declaration and the original certificate of incorporation go to the Registrar of Societies, with no form and no fee; the Registrar issues the certificate and a notice in the Gazette, and the society ceases on the day fixed. The Act sends what is left where the bylaws say. It is the Income Tax Act, which applies everywhere, that sends a charity's last property to charity, within a year, or taxes it at the whole of its value.
No closure in this case study's window followed that route in public. The nearest came after the window. In January 2026 an Iqaluit charity that had sent care boxes to new mothers in every community of the territory for ten years announced that it would end, said that the loss of a funder was the occasion but that space, volunteers and money had been strains for years, kept receiving and sending until the first of March, and thanked the people who had carried it. Whether its registration has ended on the CRA's record could not be confirmed when this case study was written, so it is not named here; when it is, it will be the one named closure in this case study, and a clear example of a board choosing its own last day.
Who sits on the boards.
Eight organizations share a director with another, through fewer than five people, and no one here sits on more than two boards. The shape is not a network. It is a territory where the same few people are asked, and most of them say yes once. No board map is drawn here, because with this few people on it the dots would be names.
The work
What we would do here.
In Nunavut, closing together would mean a room of people who already know each other, hosted by a local body, in a sector where the numbers cannot be printed.
A local host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards from Iqaluit 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, Nunavut keeps the method. This case study describes a community we are not part of, and that community decides whether it stands; it is a first draft for Nunavut to correct.
No organization is named in this case study, because no closure in its window is complete on the public record. 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 Nunavut, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Nunavut 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.
- Forty-one societies were incorporated in the territory between 2022 and 2024, and the Gazette printed no dissolution of one in the same years. Which boards here know whether the society before theirs ever ended on paper, and who has its original certificate of incorporation?
- A federal program that several Nunavut organizations depend on has now been extended one year at a time, twice, and no longer pays salaries. Which organizations here have a board that has said out loud what happens on the first of April if it is not extended a third time?
- In 2023, most of the non-profits that answered the sector association's survey had borrowed from their own other funds to cover a late contribution payment. Which boards here have a resolution on file that authorizes that, and which discovered it afterward?
- One public institution reports half the money in the scored sector, and twelve organizations report nineteen dollars in twenty of it. For the other twenty-three, who is the successor that would take the work if the board voted to end, and has anyone asked them?
- An Iqaluit charity ended in 2026 by its board's decision, said so in public, and finished its last deliveries on a date it chose. Under the Societies Act that is an extraordinary resolution, a statutory declaration, and no fee. Which boards here know that the route exists, and which believe a closure has to be a failure to file?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Nunavut.
A charity in Nunavut 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, Nunavut 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: Nunavut News on an Iqaluit charity for babies and mothers shutting down after ten years, February 2026; Nunatsiaq News on non-profits during the Inuit Child First Initiative pause, April 2025; Nunatsiaq News on the one-year Inuit Child First Initiative extension, February 2026; Government of Nunavut, 2026-27 Budget Highlights; Nunavut Association of Non-Profit Organizations, Position Paper 1 on cash flow, August 2023; Nunatsiaq News on the public housing shortage and Nunavut 3000, June 2026; Legal Registries Division, Department of Justice, Societies; Nunavut Gazette, Part I, archived volumes; Societies Act, RSNWT (Nu) 1988, c S-11.
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.