New Guidance for Canadian Registered Charities Carrying out Foreign Activities

CRA has just released a new guidance called “Canadian Registered Charities Carrying out Activities Outside Canada”.    Although the name indicates “foreign activities” this document deals with a lot more than foreign activities.  It covers the relationship between a Canadian charity and any non-qualified donee, whether in Canada or abroad.  If a Canadian charity has dealing with, for example, a non-profit that does not have charitable status then the same rules apply as a Canadian charity dealing with a foreign entity.  Essentially, almost all organizations outside of Canada are non-qualified donees.  If you are going to transfer resources to them you need to maintain “direction and control” over those resources.  This document helps a Canadian charity understand what is required for direction and control. Failure to maintain direction and control can result in a 105% penalty of the amount transferred and/or revocation of charitable status.

Who should be reading and understanding the guidance?  The main groups are:

1. registered charities that conduct foreign activities;
2. registered charities that work with intermediaries in Canada that are not qualified donees; [update – you can see CRA’s new guidance or policy CRA’s new Guidance “Using an Intermediary to Carry out a Charity’s Activities within Canada”
3. professional advisors, such as lawyers, accountants, who advise charities.

Here is a bigger font PDF version of the guidance “Canadian Registered Charities Carrying out Activities Outside Canada”.  This is easier to read, download, highlight and comment on. 

For those that are interested here is a sample contractor agreement for a Canadian registered charity conducting foreign activities   I prepared it for the Capacity Builders Charity Law Information Program (CLIP) and it is listed under “Resources”. 

As well, here are some other resources on foreign activities that I have prepared that may be of interest:

• Conduit vs. Structured Arrangement
• Foreign Contractors of Canadian Registered Charities Carrying out the Canadian Charity’s Projects – A Very Simplified View of the Process
• Here is an article I wrote in The Philanthropist on foreign activities
• Here are three one hour webinars I have prepared on foreign activities by Canadian charities:
• Here are the individual webinars (they are free and 1 hr in length)
  • Foreign Activities 101: Introduction to Canadian charities carrying out foreign activities
  • Foreign Activities 201: Advanced issues with CRA’s Guidance on Activities outside of Canada
  • Foreign Activities 301: Responding to Legal and Ethical Challenges in International
• Other webinars from the Charity Law Information Program including some on foreign activities:
• Here is the section of the GlobalPhilanthropy.ca (TM) website on global giving
• Here is the short link for the page “CRA’s new Guidance on foreign activities by Canadian charities”  
• In 2011 CRA released a guidance entitled “Using an Intermediary to Carry out a Charity’s Activities within Canada”   It is very similar to the foreign activity guidance except it deals with Canadian charities dealing with non-qualified donees in Canada.

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