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Churches in Ontario need to be compliant to the Ontario Non-Profit Corporations Act (ONCA) by Oct. 18 this year. We have worked at it and believe our bylaws are compliant, but what hoops do we need to jump through and with whom in order to demonstrate compliance? There does not seem to be any guidance on that from the government or the CRC in Canada. Perhaps there are no hoops? Nah, that would be too easy! Does anyone know what other Ontario churches have done?
Thanks,
Ed, Kemptville CRC.
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I’m following from Williamsburg Ed. I’ll let you know if I find an answer.
Thanks for asking this! We had a Network post earlier this year detailing what is involved in ONCA, and it includes a webinar recording and slides with helpful details, steps, and documents to assist you and your church demonstrate compliance with the law.
Thanks for replying. We've seen the video (helpful) and gone through the suggested readings and checks, but there is no mention of what (if anything) we need to do once we think we are compliant. I've also read through ONCA and found nothing about reporting or demonstrating compliance. Do we need to tell someone or update something somewhere? What did your group do once you had updated your documents?
There's a really helpful article from Nonprofit Law Ontario that covers the process in more detail at this link. I can tell you what I have found so far.
Your updated bylaws need to be filed with the Canada Revenue Agency. You can find instructions for that process here. You do not need to file your updated bylaws with the Ontario Government.
For ONCA Compliance, you do need to submit amended Articles of Incorporation. You can find instructions for that in step 6 of that website I linked above.
That being said, this information is only from what I have read. If you want to make sure that you are in full compliance you should talk to a lawyer.
Thanks for that link, I hadn't seen that article and will take a good look. We do know about filing bylaw changes with the CRA. We also know about having to submit changes to our articles of incorporation, but we do not have any of those. Of course, we would prefer to avoid going to a lawyer, but if we feel we must, then we will do so, if only to be sure. However that is not usually needed for simple bylaw changes.
Basically we are just updating our bylaws from a decade ago. And then we are adding a few bits from the CRC "standard bylaw" that were missing from our old bylaws. From all these responses so far it looks like we are in reasonable shape and there are no further steps we need to take than those we already know about.
Thank you for all your responses to my query.
Thanks Ben for your response to Ed's question.
You've got it right in terms of what needs to be filed for ONCA after all of the appropriate bylaw revisions are made and approved by the Members and if needed, amendments to the articles of incorporation.
Only the Amended Articles are required to be filed. The preferred method is via the Ontario Business Registry, which is where the annual return is filed as well. They can also be filed by mail.
As registered charities, updated documents (Articles of Amendment & revised Bylaws) should also be sent to CRA - Charities Division.
FYI, I posted the following ONCA resources on the CRC Network last year.
https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-administration/church-admin-finance/ontario-not-profit-corporations-act
Thank you all for your interest and for you help with this question.
Ed.
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