Elora Festival, Singers work to restore charitable status

ELORA — As the Elora Festival and Elora Singers plan for a future without their disgraced artistic director, they’re also facing another embarrassing problem — the loss of their charitable status.

Both organizations, which dismissed star conductor Noel Edison last week over complaints of sexual impropriety, had their charitable status revoked by the Canada Revenue Agency in January.

While they’re hoping to get their status restored soon, it means they’ve been unable to issue charitable receipts to donors for the past three months.

The organizations were penalized because they failed to file their annual charitable returns, a basic requirement of all registered charities in Canada.

“We dropped the ball,” said John Spearn, past chair of the board for the festival.

He blamed the mistake on a volunteer tasked with sending the annual reports to the government. Neither organization received any notice from the Canada Revenue Agency that the reports were missing, Spearn said.

“It was our fault for not filing in the first place, but we didn’t receive any notices from them,” Spearn said. “We rely heavily on volunteers, but this was basically the perfect storm.”

Once they learned their status had been revoked, they filed the reports within three days, he said. The most recent annual report available on the CRA’s website for either group is from 2015.

The loss of charitable status is significant for any charity. All donations the organizations have received since January have been basically held in trust — that money can’t be spent or a receipt given until charitable status is returned.

Roughly a third of both groups’ revenues come from donations, so that’s a major problem.

“For any organization like ours, that’s huge. Most arts organizations operate on the thin edge of the wedge,” Spearn said. “Obviously it’s critical for us. We’ve been working diligently to get it behind us.”

The Elora Festival is hoping its charitable status will be back in place before mid-July, in time for its annual celebration of classic music. The lead up to the festival is one of its busiest periods for donations.

Until then, it’s arranging to have a third-party foundation issue charitable receipts on its behalf.

After the Canada Revenue Agency revoked the charitable status, the fundraising website CanadaHelps removed both organizations from their registry of charities.

The Elora Festival and Singers are dealing with the financial issue at a time when they’re planning a future without Edison, their longtime public face.

Edison, who also resigned this week as artistic director of the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir, was the Grammy-nominated conductor who brought star power, and donors’ money, to Elora.

But Charlotte Logan, the current festival chair, said the Elora Festival and Singers are bigger than one person and is confident their longtime donors will continue to support them.

She pointed out a recent Elora Singers performance had record ticket sales, despite the absence of Edison, who was placed on leave back in late February.

“Noel was very much the face of the organization. But our product is our singers. That’s what people come to hear,” Logan said. “I think the overall impact is not going to be that significant.”

She adds that the organizations’ government funding, including arts grants, isn’t affected by the charitable status issue.

We rely heavily on volunteers, but this was basically the perfect storm. JOHN SPEARN Past chair of Elora Festival board