Special Meeting on the Future of DMG

During the 2024 Annual General Meeting for DMG, the Board of Directors announced a Special Meeting of the General Membership to vote on whether DMG should file a Notice of Intent to Dissolve the organization. This meeting will be held on May 11th, 2024 at 1PM EST. This article is written by the Board and details the events that lead to this decision, what the process entails for DMG, and an FAQ on the topic.

Why is this meeting being called?

The short answer is that DMG is in severe debt and is unlikely to be able to continue operating. We have more details on this over here.

The long answer is that our current debts and our necessity to file for insolvency are likely leaving the organization with little to no capacity to operate for at least three years after we are discharged, if not longer. In addition, the work needed to correct the errors that lead to these debts is so significant that the Board believes it is unreasonable to ask even our most dedicated volunteers to do it.

How bad is this situation?

Bad.

DMG has over $100,000 in debt, a net worth of approximately -$50,000, and is lacking significant structures that are necessary for any organizations success.

Financially, this debt and the insolvency linked to is are now limiting DMG’s ability to seek funding, and likely will be for at least the next three years while we wait to be discharged. Given grant organizations provide the vast majority of DMG’s income, this leaves very little operational or programming funding available to the organization, meaning we will be unable to staff our labour needs or provide services to our membership.

Internally speaking, the lack of basic structure in the organization has left the Board relatively incapacitated. Part of why this issue was not discovered sooner was due to a variety of complications on board custody handover, and we’ve since determined several key documentation practices are out of date, innaccurate, or otherwise missing.

We currently estimate that the amount of labour necessary to correct these errors, implement new policies and procedures, and attempt to raise enough funds to keep us afloat would be equivalent to at least five full time employees working for six months. Naturally with our debt concerns DMG would need such positions to be entirely volunteer based. The Board has been trying to tackle these problems, but is incapable of doing them alone with our other time commitments, and we are frankly burnt out.

What would dissolving the organization entail?

First and foremost, DMG would cease to exist as a nonprofit corporation. This would mean any remaining assets after insolvency including things like intellectual and physical property would be distributed to other non profits in our industry, and DMG would no longer provide any of our usual programming and services.

Notably, this process cannot begin until our financial liabilities are handled. As the bankruptcy will be an active case for at least three years after our discharge, this means that should DMG find capacity to resume activities in that time we would be able to cancel our Notice of Intent to Dissolve and continue operations. Our Notice of Intent effectively just acts as a last resort scenario for the organization – either we manage to find the money and labour to continue our activities, or we no longer are DMG.

One thing the Board wants to emphasize is that, regardless of whether the organization is a corporate entity, we are still a community first and foremost. We would encourage all our membership to maintain those community connections as best they can should DMG see it’s end.

Who gets to make these decisions?

Membership does. The Board has called for the decision based on our legal and financial advice, but at the end of the day, it’s your call and the Board can only file these documents if 67% of our members agree to the special resolution at the upcoming meeting. Notably, this is a general membership vote, meaning you do not have to meet our voting member status criteria for you to attend, vote, or participate in the discussion.

Who can we contact to find out more?

Email us at [email protected] if you have any concerns or questions. We want to maintain as open a communication network as possible during this time.