Case studies · Whitehorse and the Yukon
One in six is flagged, and the flagged ones are the ones the government pays.
The whole territory, one riding, under the Societies Act. 127 charities that filed a 2024 return, read from the public record.
Two registers count different things, and a board has to keep an eye on both.
What the sector looks like here.
The Yukon is one riding and, for most purposes, one city. Four in five of its 127 registered charities are in Whitehorse, where four in five of the territory's 48,000 people live, and the rest are in Dawson, Watson Lake, Haines Junction, Teslin and a handful of other places a day's drive apart. The median charity runs on $242,000.
The sector runs on government money. Nearly four in five of every charity dollar in the territory is a government dollar, and three in five once the hospital corporation and the university are set aside; a third of the charities draw more than half their revenue from government, and half draw none. Community benefit and religion are the two large groups, fifty-two and fifty, and religion is small money: thirty-four of the fifty congregations run on under $150,000. Forty-three per cent of the whole sector does.
The boards are full, eight per cent with three members or fewer and a median of six, and the territory still has more boards than it has people to fill them; a long-time manager here once estimated that one working Yukoner in five sits on one.
The treasury sets the terms. The 2026 budget is $2.46 billion with an $82 million deficit, and the territory has reached the borrowing limit Ottawa sets for it; the premier promised to hold operating growth to two per cent and to launch a full review of every program and transfer payment agreement, which is the instrument that funds most of the organizations in this case study. The largest single claim on the treasury is a mine: since the heap leach failed at Eagle Gold in June 2024 the territory has lent the receiver up to $220 million, and the cleanup has passed $300 million with no buyer yet. Between one annual funding agreement and the next is where organizations here lose their staff; one Whitehorse society said so in public this July, on the day it signed its first three-year agreement.
By annual revenue
By charitable purpose
Purpose is the category head on the CRA return. Median revenue here is $242,000; the median board has 6 members.
What the record shows about strain.
The model flags twenty charities, one in six, against Canada's one in eleven, and the flagged ones are not the small ones. A flag means only that an organization's filings over several years resemble those of charities that later lost their registration. Eight of the twenty run on under $150,000; the other twelve are in the middle bands, from $150,000 to $2 million, where the territory's rate is nearly twice the country's. Fewer than five have the stronger flag.
The flagged group has a clear profile. Fifteen of the twenty are in Whitehorse. The ones in the middle bands are service societies that draw about three-quarters of their money from government, keep a reserve of about a fifth of a year against the territory's three-quarters, and raise almost nothing from donors, one dollar in a hundred. That is not a description of bad boards. It is a description of organizations built to deliver a government's programs on a government's contract, one year at a time, with no reserve because the contracts never paid for one. When the contract is late, they have a month.
Five registrations were revoked between 2022 and 2025, all in Whitehorse, four of them printed in one autumn, and the split between the reasons is too small to print. In the Yukon a failure-to-file notice is more often a missed return than a death: of the thirteen such notices in the record since 2013, five belong to organizations that filed again under the same number afterward. And the Gazette runs years behind the town hall. A counselling society that closed in public in August 2019, after a strike, the loss of its government contract, and a new volunteer board that inherited a debt it could not pay and could not dissolve under, was printed as revoked in August 2023.
Underneath the CRA's five is the Registrar's own record. In 2023 the Registrar of Societies wrote to about 177 of some 700 societies that had not transitioned to the new Act or filed their reports, and the list of registered societies, which stood above 850 in 2020, was 609 by January 2025. There are two registers, and a board here has to keep an eye on both.
What an ending looks like here.
A society in the Yukon ends under Part 10 of the Societies Act in one of three ways: by its members' ordinary resolution and two directors' affidavit, without a liquidator, once every debt is paid and what is left has gone to a qualified recipient; by a special resolution and a liquidator where property or creditors remain; or by the Registrar, for unfiled reports, after a warning letter. A registered charity ends under the Income Tax Act as well, everywhere in Canada. No organization in this case study's window took the first route in public, but the territory has two clear examples from outside it.
The Whitehorse History Book Society was formed in 2011 by long-time residents to make one thing: an illustrated history of the city. It raised about $150,000 from the city's heritage fund, the Yukon Foundation and 127 patrons, published the book, launched it at the Old Fire Hall in November 2013, announced at the launch that it would wind up its affairs and give any royalties to the heritage fund for a future edition, and was revoked at its own request the next September. A society formed for a piece of work, finished it, and stopped.
The Yukon Chamber of Commerce is not a charity and is not in the Gazette, and it is still the clearest recent example of the statute's first route. At its fortieth annual meeting, in June 2025, after years of post-pandemic strain on staff and revenue, the board put a resolution to dissolve to the members and the members passed it unanimously, with the balance of the account to go to a body with a similar mandate and the three community chambers already talking about what would come next. It began to dissolve that summer.
Compared with the counselling society, the two show the difference the statute draws. A society with no debts can end by a vote and an affidavit. A society with debts cannot end without a liquidator or a court, which is why a board that sees the money running out has to decide while there is still enough left to decide with.
Who sits on the boards.
Forty-one organizations, one in three, share a director with another, through thirty-six people; three of them sit on nine boards each, and those nine are the same nine, which reads as a denomination's congregations registered one by one under the same officers. Take that structure out and the territory is twenty-nine 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.
In the Yukon, closing together would mean every board that is deciding in one room, in a sector that runs on government contracts.
A host charity, usually a healthy one with a meeting room and a small budget for lunch, invites the boards from Whitehorse 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, the Yukon keeps the method.
The society and the chamber named in this case study ended by their own decision and said so in public, and are named for that; the ones the Gazette printed are not, because the record does not show a decision, and one of them is registered again. 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 Yukon, hosted by a local charity.
The public record only shows so much. A roundtable brings six to twenty community leaders in Yukon 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.
- Four in five charity dollars in the territory are government money, and the 2026 budget promises a full review of every transfer payment agreement. Which boards here have read their own agreement to its end date, and which of them know what the organization would do in the ninety days after a letter that does not renew it?
- The flagged charities here are not the small ones. They run on $150,000 to $2 million, mostly on government contracts, with a reserve of a fifth of a year and almost no donors. Which organizations in Whitehorse would recognize that description of themselves, and has any of them said so at a board meeting?
- A counselling society that closed in 2019 was in default at the Registrar from the summer before, could not dissolve because of its debt, and was printed in the Gazette in 2023. Which register does your board check, the Registrar's or the CRA's, and when did it last check either?
- The Registrar wrote to about 177 of 700 societies in 2023, and the list was 609 by January 2025. Which organizations here have someone who could manage a proper closure, and which would rather be struck off than vote?
- The chamber voted unanimously to dissolve at its fortieth annual meeting and put its balance into a body with a similar mandate; the history book society finished its book, gave its royalties to the city's heritage fund, and dissolved. Which of the organizations here was formed for a piece of work that is now done, and who would move the motion?
The Critical Path
Closing an organization in Yukon.
A charity in Yukon 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, Yukon 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: Whitehorse Star on the Registrar's purge of inactive societies, August 2023; Government of Yukon open data, list of registered Yukon societies, January 2025; CBC on the Yukon's non-profit sector and its reliance on government, March 2020; Yukon News on the 2026-27 budget and the debt cap, March 2026; Government of Yukon, Budget 2026-27 address; CBC on the Eagle mine cleanup passing $300 million, 2026; Yukon News on the Yukon Chamber of Commerce voting to dissolve, June 2025; Whitehorse Star on the Whitehorse history book and the society that made it, November 2013; Whitehorse Star on the counselling society's plan to close, August 2019; Yukon News on a three-year funding agreement after years of annual ones, July 2026; Government of Yukon, dissolve or revive a society; The Yukon Foundation.
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.