The Yukon government is purging the registry rolls of inactive non-profit societies and is giving them until tomorrow to either come into compliance with the 2021’s new Societies Act regulations, ask for an extension or face dissolution on Sept. 30.

The list of non-compliant organizations includes well-established groups such as the Association of Yukon Fire Chiefs and the lesser-known, such as a group called the Lucky Davey’s Club.

All Yukon societies were required to go through the transitional process to comply with the new act, and would be in default if they had not done so by last March.

Some of the delinquent organizations on the list have also failed to keep up on the normal minimum requirements for a society.

“Hold an AGM and file an annual report is the bare minimum you need to do,” said Kara Johancsik, the Yukon government’s societies advisor.

The initial deadline for groups to transition was March 31, so these societies have had about five months’ leeway so far to comply.

“We worked really hard to get as many people over that deadline as we could,” Johancsik told the Star.

At this point, a society can still seek an extension by simply calling Jahancsik’s office and pleading its case. An extension will give an organization until March 31, 2024 to get sorted out.

“The extension is quite generous,” Johancsik said.

It is a process for these groups to become a society in the first place, and maintaining the status confers legitimacy on an organization and helps with fundraising.

Being a society gets groups access to funding streams they would not be able to be eligible for otherwise, said Johancsik.

“You’re a legal entity,” she said.

“There’s some sort of officiality behind your group if you register as a non-profit and you operate as one.”

There about 700 societies altogether in the territory, with about 177 on Johancsik’s delinquency list.

Johancsik reckons many of the societies in default may have been formed just before the pandemic.

“We saw a lot of non-profits go dormant during COVID,” she said.

She also said perhaps as many as 20 of these have already filed the necessary paperwork since the list was initially put out by her office and are already back into compliance.

About another 10 to 15 actually intend to dissolve and are just using this process as an easy way to shut down.

Others seem to have effectively stopped operating and nobody is in charge to respond to Johancsik’s letter.

“A lot of those 100 groups we’ve had no contact, there’s been no response from them,” she said.

“So, my assumption is that they’re basically not active anymore, and there’s nobody actively on the board.”

To try to get in touch with many of these, Johancsik has had to send physical letters, as that may be the only contact information she has for a group.

If she knows someone involved in the society, she will try to reach out via phone, but that is not always the case.

“Letters are not a really great way to reach people,” she said.

Johancsik is still pretty flexible, and said she is not trying to purge actual active societies; simply the ones that are no longer operating.

That’s why she is giving a lot of leeway to get these societies into compliance.

“There’s so much that non-profits do in the Yukon that benefit everybody,” she said.

A complete list of societies that have missed the deadline and are to be stricken from the rolls will be published in the Yukon Gazette by Johancsik some time early next week, she said.

Information on how societies can contact Johancsik to get an extension can be found at Yukon.ca/societies.