Case studies · Regina
Twenty-eight revocations, and two of the city's clearest closures are printed as failures to file.
Regina and the Qu'Appelle Valley, under The Non-profit Corporations Act, 2022. 644 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
The reason column records the paperwork, not the decision.
What the sector looks like here.
Regina and the Qu'Appelle Valley, the capital and the towns east up the valley through Fort Qu'Appelle, Lipton, Cupar and Southey to Wynyard, have 644 registered charities between them. The median charity runs on $188,000, forty-seven per cent run on under $150,000, and religion is the largest group, 279 of the 644. They appear here under one riding, Regina–Qu'Appelle, because the postal-code crosswalk has no rows yet for Wascana or Lewvan, Regina's other two federal seats.
It is a capital of a particular kind. Ninety-five organizations run on over $2 million, about one in seven, because the ministries, the health foundations, the university's federated colleges and the diocesan bodies are all registered here. But the churches outnumber everything else, which is the mark of the prairie rather than of a capital: every town along the valley has its churches and most of them still file. At the other end, 133 run on under $25,000.
The province sets this year's terms. Its 2026 budget projects an $819 million deficit and gives contracted community organizations two per cent, a point less than last year, after the sector asked in November for multi-year funding and did not get it. The University of Regina has lost about twenty million dollars as incoming international students fell from 2,400 to 600, and is budgeting a deficit for three years. Both are Regina facts before they are Saskatchewan facts, because Regina is where the ministries and the university are.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $188,000; the median board has 7 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags forty charities, six per cent, well 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-four of the forty run on under $150,000, and fewer than five have the stronger flag.
Twenty-eight registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, sixteen for failing to file and twelve at the charity's own request, and the count has to be read with care. Five of the twenty-eight are one decision. Between 2018 and 2021 five Anglican parishes in the city, All Saints, St. James the Apostle, St. Luke's, St. Matthew's and St. Philip's, became one parish, Immanuel, which worships in the former All Saints building on Massey Road. The Gazette recorded the end of their five registrations across two years and under two different reasons, three at the parishes' request and two as failures to file. The difference is paperwork, not a verdict. Two more of the twenty-eight are program numbers of one national body, ended by its own housekeeping.
The reason column gets two more closures wrong. In May 2024 the Lorne and Evelyn Johnson Foundation moved its $7.5 million endowment under the community foundation, in public, with a celebration; in September 2025 the Gazette recorded it as a failure to file, because there was nothing left to file for. In March 2025 the board of the Regina Folk Festival announced that the fifty-third festival was cancelled and that the organization would dissolve according to its bylaws, thanked its funders, volunteers and staff, refunded the tickets, and called a meeting of its members; in March 2026, after this case study's window, the Gazette printed it as a failure to file. Both were decisions taken in the open by people who did the work in order.
Take the parishes and the housekeeping out and the count is an ordinary one: twenty-one revocations in four years, thirteen of them for failing to file. Here the record says more about its own limits than about strain.
What an ending looks like here.
A corporation without share capital in Saskatchewan ends under Part 16 of The Non-profit Corporations Act, 2022, by its members' special resolution and the Registrar's certificate, with what is left locked by statute to charity or a public body. A registered charity ends under the Income Tax Act as well, everywhere in Canada. The valley and the city have each done it in public.
Living Christ Evangelical Lutheran in Lipton was itself the joining of two congregations, in 1997, from two Lutheran bodies. In March 2021 its members voted to disband and sell the building. On 9 January 2022 they carried the sacramental vessels and the furnishings out of the church themselves, sent the records back to the early 1900s to the synod, sent the hymnals to the mission office in Winnipeg, and heard the building declared closed for worship. The Gazette caught up fourteen months later.
In the city, five vestries and a bishop took three years to become one congregation, put three buildings up for sale, and asked council to lift a heritage designation from a fourth whose foundation was failing, so that the site could be housing. A folk festival's board read its costs, told the city, and dissolved by its own bylaws. A family foundation folded its endowment into the community foundation, where it still gives every September. All four were decided in the open, and two of them are in the Gazette as something else.
Who sits on the boards.
One hundred and fifty-seven organizations, one in four, share a director with another, through 132 people. Nine of them sit on seven boards each, which reads as a slate: one body's officers named on every registration it holds. Around that is a wide ring of 110 people on exactly two.
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 Regina, closing together would mean the city's boards and the valley's working from one Toolkit, since the record already treats them as one.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards from the city and the valley towns 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, Regina keeps the method.
The congregations, the festival and the foundation named in this case study ended, or moved, 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 Regina, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Regina 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.
- Five Anglican parishes in this city spent three years becoming one, and the Gazette recorded the end of their five registrations across two more years, under two different reasons. Which of the city's other bodies, a diocese, a synod, a family of foundations, keep their work under several numbers, and who on their boards knows what each number will look like in the Gazette the year after a decision?
- A congregation in Lipton voted in March 2021 to disband, closed its doors in January 2022, sent its records to the synod and its vessels to the mission office, and was revoked in March 2023. Which of the valley's congregations, from Fort Qu'Appelle to Wynyard, are one winter behind it, and who has sat with them?
- The province's 2026 budget gives contracted community organizations two per cent against an $819 million deficit, after the sector asked in November for multi-year funding. Which of the eighty-eight relief-of-poverty charities in this case study run on that two per cent, and which of their boards have said so out loud?
- The University of Regina has lost twenty million dollars as incoming international students fell from 2,400 to 600, and is on a three-year deficit plan. Which of the seventy-five education charities, and the sponsorships and student groups around the campus, were built on the university's people and money, and which of them know it?
- One in four organizations here shares a director with another, and nine people sit on seven boards each. Which of the eighty boards of three members or fewer are held together by someone on this list, and what happens to the other six boards the day that person steps down?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Saskatchewan.
A charity in Saskatchewan closes twice: once under The Non-profit Corporations Act, 2022, 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, Saskatchewan 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: Immanuel Anglican Church, Regina, on the five parishes that became one, 2018 to 2021; CBC on council removing St. Matthew's heritage designation at the diocese's request, February 2023; The Canadian Lutheran on Living Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lipton, closing its doors, July 2022; The Regina Folk Festival's statement on its dissolution, March 2025; 980 CJME on the Regina Folk Festival's board and the end of the festival, March 2025; Saskatchewan Community Foundation on the Lorne and Evelyn Johnson Foundation joining it, May 2024; Government of Saskatchewan, Social Services budget 2026-27, two per cent for community-based organizations, March 2026; 620 CKRM on the 2026-27 provincial budget and its $819 million deficit, March 2026; 980 CJME on the University of Regina's $20 million loss from international enrolment, April 2026; 620 CKRM on Regina's 2025 point-in-time homelessness count, January 2026; Saskatchewan Community Foundation, Vital Signs and Regina's Non-Profit Voices; Saskatchewan King's Printer, The Non-profit Corporations Act, 2022.
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.