Do you know how your non-profit collects personal information?
An example of collecting personal information is asking someone for their name and email address to include on a membership group email.
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Does your non-profit know its fiscal year?
A fiscal year is a one-year period of time that a non-profit uses for accounting purposes and preparation of its financial statements.
For example, non-profits have their fiscal year aligned with the calendar year (January 1 to December 31) or government year end (March 31).
Other non-profits set their fiscal period to align with a natural break in their operations, such as a summer camp with a fiscal year of September 1 to August 31.
Do you know where to find your Statement of Directors and Registered Office (one document)?
This document used to be called the Annual Report. It is a statement that includes the names of the current directors of the non-profit and an address for each director. It also includes the registered address of the non-profit. The registered address is usually the place where your non-profit receives mail and where records can be accessed/located.
Does your non-profit know how to remove a director who is behaving poorly or is not fulfilling their duties?
By remove, we mean the process of taking someone off your non-profit’s board so they are no longer a director of the non-profit.
Does your non-profit know when a membership starts and ends?
By checking its bylaws.
Does your non-proft know how long a director is allowed to sit on its board before they must be re-elected or re-appointed (term length)? Note: we are not asking about consecutive term limits.
A director’s term is the time the director is allowed to sit on the board until they must be re-elected, be re-appointed, or step down.
A director’s term begins when the director is either elected or appointed to the board.
A director’s term ends when the director must either conclude their time on the board or seek re-election or re-appointment. This should be set out in your non-profit’s bylaws.
Does your non-profit know how many directors are supposed to be on its board according to its bylaws?
Your non-profit's bylaws should state the number of directors that are supposed to be on the board.
The Societies Act requires non-profits to have a minimum of three directors. The Societies Act does not set a maximum number of directors.
Does your non-profit have different classes of members?
Classes are groups of members that have different sets of rights. For example, some non-profits have voting and non-voting classes of members.
If you aren’t sure whether your non-profit has member classes, check its bylaws. If a non-profit has more than one class of members, it is required to describe the class and list its respective rights in the bylaws.
Note that this does not refer to different categories of members (e.g. family and individual memberships; gold and silver memberships) unless there are different rights associated with that category.