As I mentioned in “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada in 2023,” the number of private foundations in Canada continues to grow, while the number of public foundations continues to fall. As of early 2024, there were 6,770 private foundations registered as charities, compared to 6,102 in 2021. Meanwhile, the number of public foundations decreased to 4,780, as of early 2024, down from 4,944 in 2021. In fact, as shown on Tables C and F (below), the decline in public foundations and increase in private foundations have been occurring for some time. To find out more, I took a closer look at 10 years of data about registrations and revocations of public and private foundations, data from the Canada Gazette and T3010 tax forms. (See our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series for other articles and insights.)

Ten Years of Public Foundations Closing Down

Click photo for Don McRae’s “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada in 2023.”

Public Foundations are falling out of favour as a method of helping Canadians build our society. The numbers show it, and they demonstrate that this has been happening for some time. And there were surprises in what I found. While I expected most foundations to be under the Community Benefit heading (hereafter referred to as Community), I didn’t expect the percentage to be so high: 86.7% of public foundations are registered under Community (see Table A).

Also, you’ll notice in Table A (below) that the number of public foundations (registered as charities) took a dip at the start of the pandemic. Registrations started to increase in 2021 and 2022, but they took a real dip, to 38, in 2023. (Note, I actually looked at additional data, back to 2007, and the 38 registrations in 2023 is still the lowest number of registrations in the past 17 years.)

Table A: Registrations of Public Foundations from 2014 to 2023

Correspondingly, 78.5% of revoked public foundations are under Community (see Table B, below); the major charitable category revoked was “Community benefit – foundations,” with 94 charities in 2023 and 84 charities in 2022. And 13.5% of revocations were for Education charities.

Table B: Revocations of Public Foundations from 2014 to 2023

And as shown on Table C (below), there have been 711 registrations and 1,105 revocations for a net loss of 394 public foundations in the last ten years. In fact, 2012 is the last time that there were more public foundation registrations than revocations. So, the decline has been occurring for some time.

Table C: Public Foundation Revocations Over Registrations from 2014 to 2023

It’s unclear why public foundations have fallen out of favour. It could be that it takes more organization and collaboration to create a public foundation. Maybe Canadians aren’t supporting these groups to the level they were before. (United Ways have certainly found that out in terms of revenue.) It could be that governments and other funders have changed their priorities.

The Past 10 Years of Private Foundations Growing

New private foundations (65.9% of them) are registered mainly under the heading of Community, with Religion taking second place, at 16.8% (see Table D, below). There was a small dip in the number of registrations in 2020, probably due to the pandemic, but new registrations more than recovered in 2021 and onward.

Table D: Registrations of Private Foundations from 2014 to 2023Ěý

In Table E (below), you can see that Community private foundations make up 68.3% of revocations, with Education coming in second, at 17.6%.

Table E: Revocations of Private Foundations from 2014 to 2023

As seen in Table F, below, registrations outnumber revocations of private foundations. There were 2,519 private foundations registered in the ten years from 2023 to 2014. Conversely, there were 1,184 revocations. That’s a net gain of 1,335 private foundations in the past decade. What’s striking is that registrations outnumbered revocations in all ten years (and of note, registrations outnumbered revocations all the way back to 2007).

Table F: Private Foundation Registrations vs. Revocations (2014-2023)

Why All This Matters: A Major Shift in Canada?

Illustration: “Of Pride,” in John Day’s “A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation,” London, 1569.

I, for one, am concerned that there are fewer public foundations than before, because the trend suggests that our common understanding of charity is changing from a public duty to private effort and, frankly, moving toward a more of how our society takes care of others. In other words, what we view as worthwhile charitable causes or acts is becoming more privatized, more limited and perhaps more about the rich giving to the “needy” (there are still Canadian charities that use that term).

When you consider the number of closed charities, including shuttered public foundations, you have a picture of a loss of a number of community organizations in all parts of Canada — in cities, towns and villages across all provinces and territories — encompassing every major activity that charities undertake.

The increase in private foundations may reflect the current distribution of wealth in Canadian society and the increasing gap between those who have and those who don’t – or more precisely, between those who have a lot and those who deserve a whole lot more. However, the increase in the number of private foundations might also suggest that our society may be increasingly viewing monied individuals’ or families’ predilections of charity in a more favourable light than collective or community responses. If so, we’re poorer for it.

Don McRae is an old, left-handed, male, Scottish agnostic with Wesleyan-Methodist grandparents (hence the agnosticism). He’s also a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. For more than ten years, McRae has studied trends in the charitable sector by analyzing the revocations of charitable status that are published in the Canada Gazette. He digs deeper into trends by examining data from annual charity tax returns (T3010 forms) at the end of the calendar year, and looks at newly registered charities to see what replaces the revoked ones. McRae can be found on .

Photo is courtesy of Janko Ferlic.

Last year, 1,471 new charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency. During that time, the CRA revoked the registration status of 2,116 charities. That means there were 645 fewer charities in Canada as of early 2024. Year after year, there are fewer registered charities in Canada; there are approximately 86,000 charities currently. By analyzing the revocations data of charitable status that are published in the Canada Gazette and by examining data from registered charities’ annual charity tax returns (their T3010 tax forms), we can identify four trends in our sector. (This story is part of our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series.)

#1 Losing Ground at Christian Charities

Church closings are likely to continue. In 2019, the National Trust of Canada predicted that 9,000 places of worship will close in the next decade.

±ő’v±đ said this before, and I’ll say it again, the Christians are taking a beating. In 2023, there were 340 Christian charities created and 635 revoked for a net loss of 295 registered charities, including about 150 that had been around for at least half a century. Every year, more churches, along with their charitable activities, close, due in large part to pandemic waves that stopped congregations from meeting and raising revenue. It also appears that the continuing waves of COVID infections made older congregants think twice before attending church services. In 2022, religious charities made up approximately 31% of all revocations. In 2023, this increased to 36%.

As I wrote in “Church Closures and the Loss of Community Social Capital,” these closures represent a loss of community capacity that will be hard to rebuild, especially at a person-to-person level. When faith buildings close down, their spaces for community activities (such as arts, culture, sports, recreation, social clubs, education, food banks and social services) also close down.

There are approximately 25,900 Christianity-based registered charities in Canada, and thousands more, along with their charities, will likely close.

And church closings are likely to continue. In 2019, the National Trust of Canada predicted that 9,000 places of worship will close in the next 10 years, and it’s clear, from the revocation data on charities, that the bulk of the closings will be mainstream Christian churches. We’re about half way through those 10 years — so thousands more churches and their charities are likely to close.

Other major religions in Canada are creating more charities than they’re losing. Judging from charity names and based on trends, the new religious charities are for non-Christian religions and smaller Christian denominations. For example, the number of Islam-based registered charities increased to 511. (See Table 1).

Table 1: Number of Charities by Category Code for Calendar Years 2022 and 2023

#2 Losing More Ground at Arts Charities and Volunteer-Run Charities

Volunteer-supporting charities are closing at alarming rates.

In addition to losing more church-based charities, Canada has lost almost 300 arts groups over the past three years. Approximately one-fifth of them were arts charities that taught people to act, sing, dance, paint and undertake other artistic endeavours. In short, a number of arts groups lost the opportunity to perform and, therefore, generate revenue. Also, many theatre companies and other arts group continue to face pandemic-caused economic woes. People aren’t returning to theatres for instance, and some theatres are in danger of losing their buildings.

And Canada has lost another swath of community-building charities: historical societies, hospital and seniors’ residence auxiliaries, literacy groups, museums, seniors’ centres, parent-run school councils, and other charities. A good number of these were run by volunteers.

In addition, there were a number of community-based groups that stopped meeting and/or lost revenue during the pandemic. Many of these helped others with information, counselling, the provision of food/warmth, daycare and after-school spaces.

Lastly, we’re losing public foundations. Some of these were fundraising vehicles for specific groups, but a number were community-based fundraising and granting bodies. (See “Private Foundations Expand as Public Foundations Close Down.”)

#3 The Pandemic Effect Still Shows

More than one fifth of charities reported significant decreases in revenue in their last five years of operations.

Pandemic restrictions from the past are still playing out with charities by stopping or severely limiting charities’ revenue generation. In 2023, COVID led to close-downs of literacy groups, hospital charities and many long-standing welfare and social services groups, some of whom (such as the Edmonton Safety Council, Canadian Arctic Resources, and Employee Charitable Trusts) had been around for more than 60 years. The pandemic closures in 2023 mirror what happened in previous years (see my “Revocations Data Shows COVID Crisis Led to Charity Closures”).

More than one fifth of charities reported significant decreases in revenue in their last five years: 426 out of 1,936 charities faced voluntary revocations and failure-to-file revocations. A number of these charities’ T3010 tax forms contained comments about stopping their activities and trying to wait out pandemic restrictions on holding meetings, performances and classes. Not all of these decreases in revenue were necessarily COVID related. Revocation data before the pandemic had shown similar decreases, but not to the degree of the past four years. Similarly, some new charities never gained traction; a number of charities that registered during the pandemic never submitted their first T3010.

Speaking of inactivity, 470 charities were moribund; that is, 470 out 1,936 revocations (or 24%) included no or little charitable activity in 2023. The number was 451 (or 29%) in 2022, so being moribund remains about the same in both years — and is still a major factor in revocations.

What many people don’t know is that there are still a high number of inactive charities in Canada that have four or five years of no revenue and no activity, which leads one to believe that the overall number of charities will continue its slow but steady reduction in numbers.

#4 Increase in Number of Foundations

Click the image for Don McRae’s closer look at foundations in Canada: “Private Foundations Expand as Public Foundations Close Down in Past 10 years.”

The trend from previous years continued in 2023 with the number of foundations increasing to 13.5% of all registered charities in Canada — for a total of 11,550 private and public foundations. Also, last year, the number of private foundations in Canada continued to grow (to 6,770 private foundations), while the number of public foundations continued to fall (to 4,780 public foundations). Here are some of the new foundations that started in 2023:

• Edmonton Elks Foundation
• Saskatchewan Indigenous Community Foundation
• Northern Lights Community Foundation – Fort McMurray
• Jeunes Philanthropes de Quebec
• Black Culture and Heritage Foundation for Canada
• Markham Foundation for the Performing Arts
• Operation Underground Railroad, Inc.
• Subway Care Foundation

For a more detailed analysis of trends in foundations in Canada, see McRae’s “Private Foundations Expand as Public Foundations Close Down in Past 10 Years.”

Don McRae is an old, left-handed, male, Scottish agnostic with Wesleyan-Methodist grandparents (hence the agnosticism). He’s also a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. For more than ten years, McRae has studied trends in the charitable sector by analyzing the revocations of charitable status that are published in the Canada Gazette. He digs deeper into trends by examining data from annual charity tax returns (T3010 forms) at the end of the calendar year, and looks at newly registered charities to see what replaces the revoked ones. McRae can be found on .

Photos are courtesy of Karl Fredrickson, Ruth Gledhill, Piron Guillaume and Luke Chesser.

One of the many effects of the pandemic was a major shutdown of many forms of face-to-face volunteering. Meetings stopped, museums closed, theatres were dark, sports venues were empty and choirs lost their voice. And this is important, because 58% of charities across Canada are solely volunteer run, according to Canadahelps’ Giving Report 2023. While virtual volunteering tried to fill the gap and the easing of restrictions has brought back many types of person-to-person volunteering, the number of volunteers and hours isn’t back to pre-pandemic levels. (This story is part of our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series.)

Don McRae studies trends in the charitable sector by analyzing the revocations of charitable status that are published in the “Canada Gazette.” Other articles in his “Charity Trends and Revocations” series are found here: /panl/don-mcraes-charity-revocations-series.

But something else is changing. Our traditional model of volunteering was hit by a major shock with the pandemic, one that stressed and, in some cases, broke our ways of helping each other. As a society, we need to find ways to build back better. But first, we need to recognize that the pandemic sped up changes that were already occurring in volunteering and philanthropy; specifically, the loss or erosion of a number of volunteer hubs.

Many of the organizations that are incubators for volunteering or that facilitate and provide resources toward that end are in trouble. Data on the registration of new charities and the revocation of older, mature groups suggests we’re losing parts of our system of volunteer support with little else but computer screens to replace the assistance and personal contact our society has come to rely on.

Read Don McRae’s update to this article from April 2024: “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada in 2023.”

We’re losing the groups that bring people together at the local level and that provide space, tools and money to support community causes. We’re losing churches, service clubs, auxiliaries and other groups that provide the structure for volunteering at the local, regional and national levels.

Religious institutions are closing down

In 2019, the National Trust of Canada predicted that we’ll lose 9,000 places of worship the next ten years. And it’s clear, from the revocation data on charities, that the bulk of these will be mainstream Christian churches. With the exception of Baha’is Assemblies, which are usually too small to have their own building, the other major religions in Canada are creating more charities than they’re losing.

The information from the shows this trend. Since 2000, 7,171 Christian charities have been registered and 8,036 Christian charities have been revoked for a difference of 865 charities. The article Church Closures and the Loss of Community Social Capital gets into more detail.

Churches are neighbourhood organizations. They provide funds for local groups, set up soup kitchens and foodbanks, run thrift shops, provide opportunities for youth, like Scouts and Guides, and sponsor immigrant and refugee families

They advocate for their neighbourhoods and communities. Most churches have kitchens, meeting rooms, auditoria, gyms and stages. But it’s not only the loss of one congregation and its volunteer habitat that’s at stake.

To read all of Don McRae’s stories in our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series, click the above image.

In 2020, a report entitled looked at what would happen to Canadian communities when faith buildings close down and are no longer available to community groups and nonprofits. Thirty-two percent of respondents said that they paid nothing for their spaces, and 27% said they had other arrangements, including bartering or exchange of services. Other groups said that they paid minimal amounts. The organizations using these spaces were arts and culture, recreation and sports, social clubs, education and research, food security and daycares. The convenience of the location is a major factor for these groups. The loss of this community infrastructure and social capital is clear. But they’re not the only change in the charitable sector.

Volunteer-supporting service clubs are disappearing

A quick scan of budgets of 46 Lions Clubs indicated that more revocations are coming. Fourteen of them (30%) had annual revenues under $1,000, and 19 of them (41%) had revenues under $5,000.

Service clubs bring people together to volunteer and raise funds to improve the health and wellbeing of their communities. These clubs undertake a number of projects to meet local needs. They support school breakfast programs, youth activities, medical research and equipment, seniors, scholarships and bursaries, summer camps, sports, recreation, music festivals and more.

The charity database shows that there are 440 Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis and Optimist Clubs charities in Canada. It also shows that another 283 have been revoked. On the face of it, these numbers look good. If we look at the number of new charities and revoked charities since 2000, the picture changes. There were 88 new club charities since 2000. In the same time period, 199 of these clubs were revoked.

Auxiliaries charities are attracting fewer volunteers

“Auxiliaries” are often volunteers who assist health care workers and raise funds for hospitals, seniors’ homes and other areas in health. Hospitals were essential during the pandemic, but not all of their functions continued. Those people who did the work for the auxiliaries charities stayed at home. Gift shop volunteers and people who provided information and helped out with fundraising — or who delivered books, or who undertook the little acts of caring that improve patients’ experiences — were gone.

There are 357 auxiliaries registered as charities and another 238 of these groups that have been revoked. Again, if one looks at the numbers since 2000, the picture changes. There have been 39 new charitable auxiliaries since 2000, but 163 of these groups have been revoked since then. The pandemic hit these groups hard and several have lost their charitable status, in part because their members are older and still have health and safety concerns about face-to-face volunteering.

Community resource groups are decreasing

These are the two charitable categories that capture groups that undertake activities that affect local communities. Community resource organizations include daycares. community resource centres, women’s groups, friendship centres and immigrant settlement, to name a few. Public amenities groups include libraries, museums, playgrounds, historical societies, recreation centres and cultural associations.

Because they’re community-based, the pandemic restrictions hit these organizations particularly hard. There were 205 community resource groups registered since January 1, 2020. Over that same time period, 294 groups have been revoked for a loss of 89 groups. Similarly, 208 public amenities groups were registered since January 2020 and 292 have been revoked, for a loss of 84 groups.

A sampling of the revocations data shows the loss of community information groups, daycares, seniors’ groups, heritage and historical societies, local recreation groups, family services and museum support groups. A good number of these groups were in smaller or rural communities where they may have been the only provider of the service or activity.

Volunteer centres and bureaus face shrinking budgets

On the whole, volunteer centres have a precarious funding model. With the exception of some government support in Quebec and New Brunswick, there’s no concerted government support for these groups in Canada. In a survey of 61 volunteer centres with charitable status, it was found that 30 centres had a decrease in funding in the past year, five maintained their budget, and 24 had budget increases. The bad news was that two of the centres closed down since the previous survey. Thirty-two of these groups have been revoked, with 25 of the revocations occurring since 2000. Twelve volunteer centres have been registered since 2000.

Volunteer centres not only provide a wide range of volunteer opportunities, they also target their placements. They help students to find interesting positions so they not only meet their school volunteering hours, but also find possible career choices. They help newcomers by giving them the chance to learn language and social skills while making a contribution to their new community. They provide seniors with specific supports reducing their social isolation and giving them the sense of inclusion and fulfillment that volunteering provides.

This is not new; charitable organizations have a life cycle. They form to fill a community need; they meet it and wind down operations and close down. Sometimes, as with community information centres, much of their business can now by met by a quick internet search. The problem is that the information part has been resolved for consumers, but the community part of this equation is lost.

Many of these groups either don’t have or can’t initiate succession plans to rejuvenate their organizations. In their last Public Information Returns, volunteers from churches, auxiliaries and similar groups have mentioned that the next generation of people were not taking over. Several groups tried to recruit new people to carry on, but the efforts were too late and did not bear fruit.

The point is that a number of the key organizational building blocks of volunteering in our society are under stress or disappearing, and we have not created the organizational structures to replace them. Our model is changing and the pandemic has only sped up this process of loss.

The way forward

There are three things that we can do to address this: research to understand the changes; recognition of the need to act; and the provision of sustainable funding to voluntary organizations.

The pandemic has shifted the ways in which we volunteer. We know anecdotally and from a few limited surveys that volunteering rates have gone down. There has been dislocation. Volunteer managers were redeployed or let go during the pandemic. We know that virtual volunteering has found a place in our support to communities, but we have little idea of its effectiveness, especially over the long term.

We need comprehensive research to show what has changed and what has remained the same, with an emphasis on face-to-face volunteering, especially for older volunteers. Then we need to re-tool and carry out a National Action Strategy on Volunteerism, according to , to support or recreate the role these groups play in community building.

But the key to success rests on action. Funders, from foundations to corporations to government and charities, need to recognize the loss that’s occurring and then be willing to address this issue together. Hollowing out our downtown cores or rural centres is a straightforward loss of the community. It can only lead to mounting social costs over the long run.

For example, churches are closing down in rural, urban and suburban parts of Canada. In some cases, the cause is a declining number of congregants paired with an increasingly old and expensive building. If the building is still in good shape, it can and has been repurposed as a community hub, giving groups a place to meet and undertake activities. There have been recent successes in Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa toward that end. It has taken a fair amount of good will and a coalition of funders, especially from the former owners, but it has worked. We need more innovation like this to move on.

Finally, support from funders must recognize operational needs. Too many groups depend on a fragile patchwork of funding sources. A number of recent revocations have shown mature charity groups failing after decades of cobbling budgets together when one partner changed their funding priorities.

Most voluntary groups, even if they respond to the specific priorities of funders, don’t receive the core support necessary to fund full operations. They receive support for expenses related to projects and rarely for the full operational infrastructure of the group. The funding support doesn’t support the policy development, research, evaluation and expertise that make voluntary groups the ideal candidates to build social capital.

The ways in which we volunteer have changed because our society is transforming. Older models aren’t as effective as they used to be. Some models were shaken or even broken by the pandemic. We see this in the revocation of charities that supported communities. We know what’s happening; we need the will to address it.

Read Don McRae’s update regarding volunteer-run and other charities: “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada in 2023” (April 2024).

Don McRae is an old, left-handed, male, Scottish agnostic with Wesleyan-Methodist grandparents (hence the agnosticism) — and is a Board Member of Volunteer Canada. He’s also a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. He can be found on . Photos are courtesy of Karl Fredrickson, Sandro Schuh and Welcome Hall Mission.

The 1950s and early 1960s were the high-water marks for church attendance for major Christian denominations in Canada. The loss of congregants from the mid-1960s onward usually didn’t lead to the closure of churches. Churches continued to hold services as fewer and fewer people sat in the pews. There were some mergers, and churches shared ministers or priests, but things still chugged along for decades. (This story is part of the “Charity Trends and Revocations” series.)

Since then, churches started to close. It began as neighbourhoods changed in suburbs, inner city churches became too difficult to attend, and smaller rural communities lost their young people. It continued as congregants aged until there were no people to take over the running and funding of the churches. (For an overview of trends in our sector, see “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada”. Also, a downloadable pdf of this article is available: Church Closures and the Loss of Community Social Capital, By Don McRae, March 2023.)

As reported by CBC News in 2019, the National Trust of Canada released a sobering statistic, a number buried in a Natural Resources Canada energy audit. There were 27,601 buildings for worship in Canada, and the Trust predicted that we would lose 9,000 of these buildings in the next ten years. While this audit captured buildings of all religions, it is clear from the revocations of charities (see below for details) that the bulk of these will be Christian churches. With the exception of Baha’is Assemblies, which are usually too small to have their own building, the other non-Christian religions in Canada are creating more charities than they are losing.

To read all of Don McRae’s stories in our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series, click the above image.

In 2020, a was conducted by Faith & Common Good in partnership with several other organizations. The report looked at what would happen to Canadian communities when faith buildings close down and are no longer available to community groups and nonprofits. This two-year study gathered the data of 948 nonprofit and community groups.

Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that they paid nothing for their spaces and others said that they paid minimal amounts. The top five groups using these spaces were arts and culture, sports and recreation, social clubs, education and research and social services such as food banks. A number of churches also have daycares or after-school programs. The convenience of the location is a major factor for these groups. Many of them rely on these low-cost spaces to run their programs leaving them little option if the spaces disappear. The loss of community infrastructure and social capital is clear.

Information from the charity database shows the loss of established Christian churches. Since 2000, 7,171 Christian charities have been registered and 8,036 Christian charities have been revoked for a loss of 865 charities. The data from 2022 shows that 299 Christian Churches were registered as charities while 364 were revoked.

Not to denigrate the newly registered churches, but these charities are not usually from the major denominations. They are stand-alone parishes that either stand or fall on their own. The older revoked charities (United, Anglican, Presbyterian, Catholic, Lutheran, etc.) have support and organization from national and regional offices. These bodies kept churches alive by sharing ministers and priests and providing funds when maintenance costs were too high for congregations. Now, the situation has gotten to the point now where these convening bodies conduct regular parish reviews to see which ones will close. Here are examples:

The Paroisse St-Joseph (registered in 1967, Nash Creek, NB) and Our Lady of the Visitation Parish (registered in 1977, Benjamin River, NB) are two of the Catholic churches closed as part of a reorganization of the Catholic Church in New Brunswick. The Church will go from 58 parishes to 27 in the diocese.

The Christ Church (registered in 1967, Listowel, ON) closed in 2016. It had been part of a six-point pastoral charge in the area. Only one church of the six is still active.

Knox United Church (registered in 1967, Tower Hill, NB) and Lawrence Station United Church (registered in 1967, Lawrence Station, NB) were demolished. They had two and four regular parishioners respectively. Eight churches in the United Church’s St. Croix Presbytery have closed in the last fifteen years and eight remain open.

Loss of Social Capital

Churches are neighbourhood organizations. They are incubators for volunteering. They minister religious rites like baptisms, confirmations, weddings and funerals. They provide funds for local groups, set up soup kitchens or foodbanks, have childcare or after-school programs, run thrift shops or programs like Out of the Cold. They have a choir, provide Christmas hampers, assist congregants after fires or with other challenges. They provide opportunities for youth like Scouts and Guides. But it is not only the loss of one congregation and its volunteer habitat that’s at stake. This is regularly happening across the country.

So far in 2023, 52 churches have lost their charitable status and, again, several of these were well over 100 years old. That’s a critical loss of social capital and volunteering built up over the years with people and across communities.

Case in point, on October 11, 2022, St. Luke’s Anglican Church in downtown Ottawa had a fire. It was quickly brought under control and didn’t affect other parts of the church or the apartments at the back of the church. The congregation had its challenges. Attendance was declining, the building was old and needed maintenance and the neighbourhood was changing. The fire was the last straw and, after 150 years, the congregation voted to close the church. The church, with St. Luke’s Table, provided services to local unsheltered people including meals, a social setting, recreation, laundry facilities, counselling, showers and a welcoming place for a cup of coffee.

Loss of Congregants

There are a number of factors causing the closure of churches. The first is that Christian congregations are aging out and declining in numbers. The exodus from the churches in the 60s and 70s hollowed out the core, but allowed enough people to stay on and maintain their buildings and their religion. That is no longer the case. The majority of revocations for churches, either in comments on their Public Information Returns or in articles about the closure, mention the lack of congregants. For example:

The New Castle Creek United Baptist Church (registered in 1967, Newcastle Creek, NB) was three years late on its T3010.Ěý The group had decreasing revenue. This quote sums it up: “We hold worship services each Sunday morning, no Sunday school, no children.”

The Lincoln Road United Church (registered in 1967, Windsor, ON) was built in 1915. With low attendance, it had trouble meeting its financial and voluntary obligations. “Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough of the next generation – and I’m talking about 60 years old – taking the (church director) positions. So, it had to close,” said Ross Milton, chair of the finance and property committee.

The Lone Rock United Church (registered in 1967, Lloydminster, AB) “Because of a declining number of people attending church due to an aging population and people having moved away and a lack of a younger generation to take over, it was decided to discontinue operations.”

The St. James Church (registered in 1967, Hanover, ON) after 168 years of worship closed down. The first service was held in a sod house in 1850. Despite recent renovations to make the church accessible, in the end there were only 17 regular parishioners.

The Honeywood United Church (registered in 1967, Honeywood, ON) closed after 149 years. It had all the problems of a small rural parish. The younger generations had moved away and the seniors who kept going had trouble driving there in winter.

According to a 2019 Angus Reid poll, “The number of Canadians who will attend a religious service for Christmas this year is half of what it was in Angus Reid’s 1995 Christmas survey (26% down from 53%).” In just over one generation, public behaviour changed considerably. Part of the difference in attendance from 1995 to 2019 was that many Canadians in 1995 with strong religious ties had since passed away.

Aging and Deteriorating Buildings

The church buildings are old and in need of maintenance and repair. The charitable registration system was created in January 1, 1967. As of March 6, 2023, there are over 10,000 churches with 1967 registrations meaning the churches are over 60 years old. As recent revocations have shown, many of the congregations and buildings are more than 100 years old. With a reduced congregation in a large building, maintenance becomes an issue, as was the case at these churches:

The Central United Church (registered in 1978, Barrie, ON) traced its roots back over 150 years. While the church had a viable congregation, it was built in 1957 when oil was cheap. Retro-fitting would cost between $1.5 to $2 million.

The Knox Presbyterian Church (registered in 1967, Ripley, ON) had about 10 faithful families, but no youth members, and the historic building was a financial burden. It closed in July 2019. The church had been built in 1858 (161 years old).

The Victoria Park Associated Presbyterian Church (registered in 1967, Markham, ON) closed its doors in 2018. While the church building opened in 1953, its history dated back to 1897 when a Sunday school started. It closed because of reduced finances, an aging building and a dwindling and elderly congregation (the youngest members were their 50s).

The Goldboro United Baptist Church (registered in 1967, Goldboro, NS) had two octogenarian parishioners left. The wood church was in disrepair and they didn’t have the finances to continue.

Pandemic Restrictions

One of the many effects of the pandemic and its related health restrictions was a major shutdown of religious services and many forms of face-to-face interaction. Churches were hit hard by these restrictions, especially given the age of congregants. The lack of religious services, loss of revenue and the financial needs of their buildings accelerated closures. While some churches tried offering virtual services, they were not always accessible to older congregants and this didn’t ease the financial needs of the churches:

The Fillmore Pastoral Charge (registered in 1967, Fillmore, SK) had modest revenues, but an increasing deficit. Its last full year was 2020, and its revenues went from $62,000 in 2019 to $4,000 in 2020.

The Immanuel Baptist Church (registered in 1967, Brantford, ON) has relatively stable revenues until 2020, when it was closed due to COVID restrictions. Its last Facebook page was in August 2020 saying that it would be closed until October 2020.

St. James Lutheran Church of Whitecourt (registered in 1980, Whitecourt, AB) sold the church June 1, 2021. They stated they had no choice due to COVID. In 2020, the church was closed for 19 Sundays. Their meager budget went from $33,000 in 2019 to $6,000 in 2021.

Architectural Loss

Churches were built to be the major structure in communities, usually at the centre of the town or city and on the highest ground. They are the architectural heritage and gems in many communities. The loss of these buildings makes every town or city that much poorer.

Due to the loss of especially rural churches, Quebec created a program for the protection, transmission and enhancement of religion-based cultural heritage in 1995 to restore, preserve and repurpose Quebec’s religious heritage. Also, it should be noted that Quebec appears to have been ahead of the rest of Canada in church closures. Research in 2018 using the charity database showed that while Quebec had 37.1% of all Roman Catholic parishes, it had 61.3% of all Roman Catholic church revocations.

Several communities have tried to re-purpose these facilities in order to keep as much of the architectural heritage as possible. This has included creating condominiums or apartments, community hubs, daycares or other uses. That said, these buildings are old and not necessarily suited for other purposes. Such ventures take time and money.

For example, the Kirk United Church (registered in 1967, Edmonton, AB) had a dwindling congregation and decreasing revenues. The church decided to re-imagine the use of its building to create a community hub known as Kirk Centre. The Centre was home to more than 20 groups and, pre-pandemic, about 450 people a week. It’s still very active. The Kirk Centre has a number of funders, including several religious organizations.

Conclusion

We can’t stop the closure of churches in Canada. The seeds of this demise were planted in the 1960s and 1970s. There are not enough believers left. Succession planning isn’t a solution due to age of the remaining congregants. Mergers of weaker churches allow people to congregate, but the community needs to be rebuilt outside of the former locations.

And this isn’t the only hub of social capital and volunteering that’s weak in Canada. A number of other mainstream charities are facing challenges to their brand in the charitable marketplace. They no longer hold sway as they once did. You can see it in the amalgamation and regional consolidation of these groups. The models of funding, if they even exist, are frayed and subject to the abrupt loss of funding from governments and funders that are scrambling to stay relevant.

We need to have a national conversation to rebuild nodes of volunteering and social capital that welcome all Canadians and create a new vision of how we can create community. This should involve all sectors: charities and nonprofits; governments; and corporations, businesses and unions. This vision needs to take into account reconciliation with Indigenous people, inclusion of newcomers, racialized groups and others that are missing from our current models

Using the results from this discussion, we need to see what’s working, what’s failing and what innovation and new models we can create to increase social capital and volunteering. Our efforts need to be built on including those communities that are too often left behind.

Read Don McRae’s update from April 2024: “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada.”

Don McRae is an old, left-handed, male, Scottish agnostic with Wesleyan-Methodist grandparents (hence the agnosticism). He’s also a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. He can be found on . Photos are courtesy of Karl Fredrickson, Josh Applegate, Donna Spearman, Bohao Zhao.

COVID led to charity closures

COVID has had a chilling effect on the activities and revenues of charities, as indicated by a steady stream of charities remarking on how the pandemic affected their fundraising, volunteering, social activities and how they serve their constituents. It’s now becoming clear which types of groups didn’t make it – which have closed and sought voluntary revocation of their charitable status or had their status revoked by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) due to a failure to file the annual (T3010) tax return. (This story is part of our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series.)

The best information on reasons for closure comes from voluntary revocations where the groups comment on their recent T3010s about the challenges they faced. Revocations for failure to file are not as forthcoming, because changes to activities or revenue generation create a crisis that lead to failure to file. The time lag in reporting means the critical years of 2020 and 2021 have few or no reports.

Over the past two and a half years, I have come across 93 charities where COVID has been a major factor in their demise. It’s a small sample (that likely under-reports the real extent of closures), but the patterns are clear: reductions in revenue in 2020 and 2021 and a lack of volunteers and restrictions on meetings and social interaction were key factors in closures.

Which charities were hit hardest?

To read all Don McRae’s stories in our “Charity Trends and Revocations” series, click the above image.

The majority of the organizations that made comments about COVID restrictions have been groups with older people and those that use face-to-face methods of service and interaction.

Churches were hit hard, accounting for 20 of the 93 (21%). Many churches already had declining numbers of congregants which was exacerbated further by the pandemic restrictions. So, they were already vulnerable, and the cancelling of religious services affected their financial situation leading to premature revocations.

Having studied revocations, I can safely say that the number of groups talking about a lack of volunteers as one of the reasons for revocation has increased substantially. The lack of volunteers is usually coupled with decreasing revenue (something that shows up in cold hard numbers in their revenues).

Groups of seniors or those serving seniors were particularly impacted due to the lack of volunteers as older people stopped volunteering due to health concerns. This has affected everything from hospital auxiliaries to historical societies to older niche museums or “Friends of” societies. These groups usually have modest revenues or are barely keeping their financial heads above water at the best of times. The pandemic restrictions further limited their contact and ability to raise funds.

The effect on volunteering

More generally, COVID broke the cycle of volunteering, as it forced people to take time out and consider if they should continue to risk their health. It broke their volunteering habit. We know from surveys and anecdotal information that seniors want some assurance that their well-being is respected and protected before they go back. That said, in a number of cases of closure, the groups also cited a lack of succession planning or new blood. This is especially true for churches with aging congregations and for older social service organizational models. Overall, the groups chug along with their greying cadre of volunteers, and an older model of interaction, until it becomes too late to change and recruit new faces.

Volunteering was also impacted by the number of volunteer managers who were let go during the pandemic. With little or no face-to-face volunteering happening and revenue sources drying up, these managers were expendable. People with years of volunteer management experience left and found other work. Now groups are trying to hire for these positions and the field is sparse. Volunteer management is a learned trade and most of that learning comes from doing, so groups will be challenged to keep their programs going. And having inexperienced volunteer managers is not the best way to retool your volunteering needs in reaction to existing COVID concerns, especially from seniors.

The charities that were revoked involuntarily for failure to file had also been vulnerable before the pandemic. Most experienced a decrease in revenue long before 2020, showing that multiple organizational problems already existed. I suspect that the next two years of failure to file revocations may show a different trend; decent revenues and then sudden decreases followed by failure to file.

What seems clear in both scenarios of voluntary revocation and failure to file is that we are only seeing the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Read Don McRae’s update from April 2024: “Four Trends in the Creation & Shutdown of Registered Charities in Canada.”

Don McRae is a former federal public servant and a longstanding volunteer, consultant, writer and researcher on the charitable sector. Since 2020, he’s been following how the pandemic has affected Canadian charities. His information on closures caused by COVID has come from news stories, the internet, YouTube videos, a few mentions in the Public Information returns from charities, and from reports of revocations of charitable status. McRae is on .