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GovernWell provides all Directors (and staff if any) easy access to all the essential Corporate Information that is required for grant applications, insurance renewals, banking changes and other corporate activities. Corporation number, date of incorporation, CRA Business Number, date of charity registration, etc.
Volunteer Directors and staff can save the time currently wasted searching for the various documents that contain all of this basic corporate information.
GovernWell provides all Directors (and staff if any) easy access to digital versions of the foundational documents that created the corporation. These Articles of Incorporation (or Letters Patent) and ByLaws are important for new Directors to review and occasionally need to be referenced to answer a question during meetings.
The duty of care obligations of Directors under the new Ontario Not-for-profit Corporations Act expects all Directors to have access to these documents. It is no longer acceptable for these documents to be kept in a bankers box in one Director's garage, basement or home office (or in a file cabinet at an office). A digital copy on one Directors personal computer is not much better.
GovernWell provides secure collection and storage of all the required personal information about volunteers on the Board of Directors. Current practices of using generic word processing and spreadsheet tools and email or file sharing services often does not collect all of the required information and is quite insecure. With GovernWell when a new Director is elected to the Board, that individual will receive a welcome email with a temporary password and can then access the secure web app to enter their personal information.
As part of each Director’s profile, GovernWell captures the dates of the Directors election and any re-elections. For Boards with terms longer than one year, this robust tracking makes preparation for Annual Meetings much easier. And having all the required information about each Director in one profile makes completion of Annual Filings more efficient.
One of the most common issues for not-for-profits and charities is missed or incomplete annual filings to either the Corporate Registry or the Canada Revenue Agency.
This situation has gotten much worse since May of 2021 when the CRA stopped sharing information from annual filings with the Ontario Corporate Registry.
GovernWell actively tracks the due dates of both these filings and provides visual and email reminders as due dates approach. To make these filings easier, GovernWell provides support for completing these required annual filings.
Not-for-profit and charitable organizations are required to hold an annual meeting of their Members each year at which they conduct important business for the corporation such as the election of the Directors, approval of the Financial Statements for the previous fiscal year, appointment of auditors (if required) and other items.
GovernWell provides support to simplify the required Annual Meeting of Members. Reminders to schedule the Annual Meeting in a timely manner, ensure the required Notice is sent in advance, clarify which Directors are eligible for re-election, and maintain a secure and accessible record of the meeting.
Following the Annual meeting, GovernWell makes it easy to update the Directors information to reflect the elections, re-elections and terms that ended at the Annual meeting.
Governwell also provides organized storage for all the documents prepared for regular Board meetings.
The GovernWell dashboard contains a digital copy of the corporations most recent Financial Statements and Annual Report. These are important documents for new Directors and good reference to have available for existing Directors.
Not-for-profits and charities often have various agreements and contracts that can last for several years but eventually need to be renewed.
GovernWell provides both the ability store a digital copy of these date-sensitive documents and also track the expiry dates and provide escalating visual and email reminders to ensure they are renewed in a timely manner. This capability can be extremely helpful for Items like leases, Insurance policies, contracts and other agreements.
Many not-for-profits and charities are exploring ways to provide their Directors with access to digital documents using a variety of generic file sharing tools (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Sharepoint, or website members signin). Many of these approaches require sometimes complex administration of file sharing permissions and can be challenging for some Directors to access.
In additional to all of its other smart capabilities, GovernWell provides clients with a flexible storage for any additional documents required by your organizations Board of Directors.
