Case studies · St. John's
Forty-six revocations, and thirty-four of them are one decision.
The capital and the Avalon: three ridings from Signal Hill to the bays, and a count that needs a close reading. 464 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
The Gazette can be counted by a script. It can only be read by a person.
What the sector looks like here.
The three ridings of the Avalon are St. John's East, the old city and the harbour; Cape Spear, which is Mount Pearl, the Goulds, and the Southern Shore; and Avalon, which runs out through Conception Bay South to the bays. Between them is the capital of a province, and its 464 registered charities read that way. The university, the hospital foundations, the provincial agencies of every kind, and the head offices of the church bodies are all registered here; forty-nine organizations run on over $2 million, and the median charity runs on $193,000.
Underneath the institutions the sector is smaller. Forty-three per cent run on under $150,000 and seventy-three on under $25,000. Eleven per cent of boards have three members or fewer, and the median board has eight. Community benefit is the largest group, ahead of religion. Education is a large group too, because Memorial is here and so is everything that grew up around it.
St. John's East has two charities in five; the Avalon riding, the bays and the commuter towns, more than a third; Cape Spear the rest. The province's core grant to the university fell by $20.85 million in 2025, and the sector that grew up around Memorial felt it the same year.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $193,000; the median board has 8 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags thirty-four charities, seven per cent, a little 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. Fifteen of the thirty-four run on under $150,000, and fewer than five have the stronger flag.
The revocation count for these ridings needs a close reading. Forty-six registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, forty-one of them at the charity's own request, and on its face that would be the story. Thirty-four of the forty-one are parishes of the Archdiocese of St. John's, every one registered under the number of the old episcopal corporation. They were ended in two batches, on 11 May and 19 October 2024, while nineteen new registrations were opened under a new corporation. The parishes did not close. The corporation that held them was in creditor protection, selling its churches to pay the people it had harmed, and the parishes were moved to a body that was not. In the Gazette, a parish that closed and a parish that moved to a new number look the same, and one decision was printed thirty-four times.
Take the thirty-four out and the count is an ordinary one: twelve revocations in four years, five of them for failing to file, seven chosen. That is the count a board here should keep in mind. A script can count the record, but only a person who knows what the notices mean can read it.
What an ending looks like here.
A corporation without share capital in Newfoundland and Labrador ends under Part XXI of the Corporations Act, and a registered charity ends under the Income Tax Act everywhere. The city has done both in public, once simply and once in the hardest way there is.
George Street United, built in 1873, disbanded by its own vote in June 2023 and held the last of ten thousand services that October; the outreach centre it founded went on under other hands. The Archdiocese, in creditor protection since the end of 2021, sold more than a hundred properties on the Avalon and the Burin to fund a settlement a court set at $104 million and later at $121 million, watched parishioners buy some of the churches back, and moved what remained to a new corporation. One was a congregation deciding for itself. The other was a body deciding for its parishes under a court's eye.
What the city lost in between is the place it used to study itself. The Harris Centre at Memorial, which for ten years produced the province's Vital Signs, closed in 2025 when the university cut its budget. A board on the Avalon that wants to know how many organizations around it are in the same position now has this case study, and its own neighbours.
Who sits on the boards.
One hundred and forty organizations, three in ten, share a director with another, through 127 people; one person sits on eleven boards. Drawn out, it looks like a capital's network: dense around the institutions and the church bodies, with a wide ring of 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 St. John's, closing together would mean the Avalon's boards, from the old city to the bays, 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 the three 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 Avalon keeps the method.
The congregation and the body named in this case study ended, or moved, by their own decision and on the public record, and are named for that; no parish is named on its own. 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 St. John's, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in St. John's 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.
- Thirty-four parish registrations ended in 2024 and nineteen opened, one body moving its parishes to a new corporation in the middle of creditor protection. Which of the city's other bodies, a diocese, a presbytery, a foundation, keep their local work under one number, and what would happen to the local work if the number changed?
- George Street United disbanded in June 2023 and held its last service in October, with its outreach centre carried on by others. Which of the peninsula's other congregations are one winter behind it, and who has sat with them?
- The Harris Centre closed in 2025 and took with it the place where the province studied itself. Where does a board in St. John's now go to find out how many organizations around it are in the same position?
- Memorial's enrolment is falling and the province's core grant with it. Which of the city's organizations were built on the university's students, staff and money, and which of them have a board that has said so out loud?
- One person here sits on eleven boards, and a hundred and twenty-seven people sit on two or more. Which of the smallest boards, the fifty with three members or fewer, are held together by someone on this list?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Newfoundland and Labrador.
A charity in Newfoundland and Labrador closes twice: once under the Corporations Act, Part XXI, 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, Newfoundland and Labrador 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: CBC on George Street United Church's final service, October 2023; VOCM on George Street United disbanding and the Jimmy Pratt Foundation, August 2023; Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, CCAA record of the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John's; CBC on the $104 million settlement approved, July 2024; CBC on the claims rising to $121 million on appeal, 2025; The Catholic Register on the province covering $45.8 million of the settlement, 2026; VOCM on St. Patrick's parishioners and the Vatican, May 2024; CBC on the Harris Centre closing, July 2025; CBC on Memorial University's budget cuts and layoffs, 2025; Community Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, NL Vital Signs.
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.