Case studies · Prince Edward Island
A whole province in one case study.
The whole province: Charlottetown and the three rural ridings. 531 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
Four ridings, one island, every charity a neighbour.
What the sector looks like here.
Prince Edward Island is four ridings, so this case study is the whole province: Charlottetown, Cardigan down east, Malpeque, and Egmont up west, where the Evangeline Region is. Its 531 registered charities include the hospital foundation, the university, the community foundation, the churches of every parish, and the halls, rinks, and fire departments of 170,000 Islanders.
Most of them are small. The median charity runs on $109,000, more than half run on under $150,000, and 135 run on under $25,000. Religion and community benefit are almost equal in number, which is the Island: the church and the hall side by side on the same road, often with the same people on both boards.
Eighteen per cent of boards have three members or fewer, and the Island's own community sector network says fewer people have been willing to sit on boards since the pandemic. Charlottetown has a third of the charities; the three rural ridings have the rest in nearly equal parts. The boom years put most of the new people in Charlottetown and Queens County. The growth turned in 2025, and deaths now exceed births.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $109,000; the median board has 6 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags forty-one charities, eight per cent, just 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-two of the forty-one run on under $150,000. Fewer than five have the stronger flag, and on an island this size we do not print a count that small.
Sixteen registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, three in a hundred over four years, and the split between chosen and unchosen is too small to print. The Island has seen what a chosen closure looks like. Wellington United, built in 1888, closed with about ten members left. St. John's Presbyterian in New London held its last service after 140 years on 28 December 2025 and joined Kensington. Both were decided by the people who had kept them going, and the Island's historian has said that they will not be the last.
The filings show a sector held together by a small number of people. One hundred and twenty-seven Islanders sit on two or more of these boards, and one sits on eight. On the Island that is how things get done, and it means that when one of those people steps back, more than one organization feels it at once.
What an ending looks like here.
Nowhere in Canada is the successor closer. The organization that could take over a program is in the next village, the counsel is in Charlottetown, and the community foundation already holds funds for half the parishes. What an Island board lacks is a reason to decide before the last treasurer retires, and someone who has done this before in the room when it does.
Who sits on the boards.
One hundred and forty-four organizations, a quarter of the Island's, share a director with another. Drawn out, it looks like a small province seen from above: a few dense knots around the churches and the halls, and a wide ring of people on exactly two boards.
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.
On the Island, closing together would mean a whole province's boards working from one Toolkit under one host.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards from all four ridings 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 Island keeps the method.
The two congregations 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 PEI, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in PEI 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.
- Two rural churches closed in the last year, Wellington United with ten members left and St. John's Presbyterian in New London after 140 years, and the Island's historian says they will not be the last. Which congregations up west and down east are next, and who is helping them?
- The Community Sector Network says fewer Islanders have been willing to sit on boards since the pandemic. Which of the 93 boards with three members or fewer are held together by one person?
- The Island's growth has turned; deaths now exceed births. Which organizations were built for the boom years in Charlottetown, and which rural ones were never part of it?
- One Islander sits on eight boards. How many organizations would feel it on the same day if that person stepped back?
- Could the Island's community foundation host the whole province's boards closing together, and which four boards, one from each riding, would it invite first?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Prince Edward Island.
A charity in Prince Edward Island closes twice: once under the Companies Act, Part II, 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, Prince Edward Island 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.
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: Community Foundation of PEI, Vital Signs 2025; CBC on rural churches closing and a changing Island, May 2026; CBC on Wellington United Church, 1888 to 2025; Community Sector Network of PEI on board recruitment; CBC on the Island's first population decline since 2020.
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.