If a University is outside of Canada and on a special list maintained by CRA then that foreign university can issue Canadian “official donation receipts” under the Income Tax Act or tax receipts which are very valuable to Canadian taxpayers.   I recently took a look at the list.  It is divided into 3 parts – the US (529 universities in total including 1 terminated and 45 revoked), the UK (52 universities with 1 revoked) and Other (80 universities with 10 revoked).

You can see that the US and UK are well represented on the lists.  So is Australia, Israel and France.  Then there are countries like India which have no remaining universities on the list.  While Hong Kong has a few universities, China only has two.   The standard for getting on the list is that you must be a degree-granting university, typically each year 2 Canadian students are studying at the university and you apply to CRA for the status.  Here is a detailed article on the process.

If you know of a foreign university that is not on the list but maybe potentially eligible you should contact them and help them get on the list.  It will certainly make fundraising and grantmaking from Canada much easier.  Although one does not need a lawyer to assist with the process, we have helped a number of foreign universities with obtaining the registration and dealing with receipting issues afterwards.