How the Toolkit is licensed.

A Guide explains the decisions a board may face. The Toolkit is how to carry them out: checklists, motion texts, filings in sequence, forms with fees and deadlines on them. That material is perishable. A form number changes, a fee moves, and yesterday's page is a trap.

So the Toolkit moves only inside a working relationship, where we can keep it current and where someone has taken responsibility for the closure it is being used for. It is licensed to one organization, for that organization's own wind-down or merger, and to nothing and no one else. Possession of the binder authorizes nothing; the licence does.

What the licence is.

Three things have to be true before a Toolkit goes to work. The board has passed a standing motion that takes responsibility for the closure, names a coordinator, and pre-authorizes the lawyer and accountant the process will need. The named coordinator is a member of the community. And the licence is signed.

The licence then covers one edition of the Toolkit, for internal use by the board, the coordinator, the staff, and the organization's own professional advisors. Working copies for that use are fine. It includes training in how the binder is used, support by phone for the questions that arrive at anxious moments, and currency: when a form, fee, deadline, or filing address the Toolkit relies on changes, we issue the correction for that edition and flag it to the coordinator. The licence runs until the closure is complete or the board revokes its motion.

Where a board has already committed to winding down, the licence costs nothing. Charging an organization for the instructions to close it is the kind of thing this company was started to oppose.

How it reaches a community.

Most Toolkits do not arrive one at a time. A host charity in a community, with a funder behind it, runs a cohort: a small number of organizations that have each decided, or are deciding, to close well, working through it in the same months with the same method and the people who do the work. The host looks after the relationship with its community and its funder. Each participating organization passes its own motion and has its own licence. We bring the method, the binder, and the delivery.

That is how the Toolkit is meant to reach people: through a community and its own leaders, so that the knowledge stays in the community after the cohort ends. If you run a charity or a foundation and want to host one, start a conversation.

What may be reproduced, and how.

Inside a licensed organization: anything, for the work. Copy pages for the board, mark them up, fill them in, file them.

Outside it: a passage may be quoted, and a single tool may be reproduced for teaching or comment, with attribution in this form: From the Coordinator's Toolkit, Public Benefit Canada Inc., [edition and year], used under licence, publicbenefit.ca/license. Republishing the Toolkit, posting it, or using it for another organization's closure is not permitted, and a professional who wants it in their own practice needs their own arrangement with us. The Toolkit remains the intellectual property of Public Benefit Canada Inc.

What it is not.

The Toolkit and its support are practical and educational. They are not legal, tax, or accounting advice, and no professional advisory relationship arises from them. The organization makes every decision that belongs to its board or its members, and confirms any filing's current requirements at the source before submitting it. Currency support narrows the risk of a stale page; it cannot remove it.

This page describes the licence in plain terms. The signed Toolkit Licensing Agreement, with the board's motion attached, is the agreement, and where the two differ it governs. Questions to info@publicbenefit.ca.