Section 117: Foreign Gift & Contract Reporting Thresholds and Deadlines

Section 117 of the Higher Education Act requires covered colleges and universities to publicly disclose gifts from, and contracts with, foreign sources whenever the total from a single source reaches $250,000 or more in a calendar year. Reports are due January 31 and July 31, filed through the Department of Education’s reporting portal at ForeignFundingHigherEd.gov. Institutions that fail to comply can be sued by the Attorney General, charged for the government’s enforcement costs, and lose eligibility for Title IV federal student aid.

Which Schools Are Covered

A postsecondary school falls under Section 117 if it meets three conditions: it is legally authorized by its state to offer education beyond high school, it awards a bachelor’s degree or offers at least a two-year program that transfers toward one, and it is accredited and receives federal financial assistance.¹ The federal assistance condition captures far more schools than direct grants alone, because it includes institutions where aid flows through students.

Multi-campus systems cannot consolidate. Each campus is its own institution for Section 117 purposes and must evaluate and file separately.²

Who Counts as a Foreign Source

The statute reaches four categories of foreign sources:¹

Foreign governments, including national, regional, and local bodies and their agencies.
Foreign legal entities, meaning any organization created under the laws of a foreign country.
Foreign nationals, meaning any individual who is not a U.S. citizen or national.
Agents of foreign sources, including subsidiaries and affiliates acting on behalf of a foreign principal.

That fourth category is where institutions most often misread the rule. A U.S.-incorporated subsidiary of a foreign parent can still be a foreign source when it acts under the direction or management of that parent. The Department of Education has said institutions should look at how a parent and subsidiary actually interact, not just the formal corporate structure.² When money moves through an agent, the country of attribution is the principal’s, not the agent’s.

How the $250,000 Threshold Works

The reporting obligation is triggered when the combined value of gifts and contracts from a single foreign source reaches $250,000 in a calendar year.¹ Aggregation is per source, not per transaction. Monthly donations of $25,000 from the same foreign donor cross the line by October. A $150,000 in-kind gift and a $120,000 research contract from the same foreign government in the same year produce a $270,000 combined total that requires reporting, even though neither item alone would.² Financial officers need to track a running total for every foreign source.

Valuing Non-Cash Gifts and Open-Ended Contracts

The statute covers gifts of money or property, so in-kind donations count. The Department does not prescribe a single valuation method but considers fair market value appropriate for property, determined through comparable sales, replacement costs, or expert appraisals.² Contracts with open-ended or hard-to-pin-down values get the same reasonable-methodology treatment.

Anonymous Donors

Anonymity does not create an exemption. If the institution itself knows a donor’s identity, it must disclose that identity when the threshold is met, even if the donor asked to remain publicly anonymous. When a gift arrives through a third-party intermediary and the ultimate donor is unnamed, the institution has to make a reasonable effort to determine whether the original source is foreign.² Where tracing is genuinely impossible, such as pooled charitable trust contributions over which individual donors have relinquished control, the analysis shifts to whether the trust itself qualifies as a foreign source.

Foundations and Other Intermediaries

Foreign money often reaches a university through an affiliated foundation, an alumni association, or a supporting organization rather than through the university’s front door. The Department applies a rebuttable presumption: when an organization operating for the benefit of a university receives foreign money, that money is presumed to benefit the university and must be disclosed.²

A $250,000 foreign gift to a 501(c)(3) library foundation, a foreign contract entered by a university-operated laboratory, or a foreign donation passed through an alumni association and earmarked for a new building all trigger reporting by the university. The presumption can be rebutted for a specific transaction when the institution genuinely does not benefit, but the burden of due diligence sits on the institution.

What the Report Must Contain

For non-government foreign sources, the report gives the total dollar amount attributable to each country. For foreign governments, the report identifies each government by name and gives the aggregate amount from it. If a foreign source owns or controls the institution, the report must identify the source, state when control began, and describe any resulting changes to programs or structure.¹

Restricted or Conditional Gifts

Additional disclosure is required whenever a gift or contract contains provisions about hiring, assigning, or terminating faculty; creating new departments, centers, or research programs; selecting or admitting students; or awarding financial aid limited to students of a particular country, religion, sex, ethnicity, or political opinion.² For those transactions the institution must report the amount, the date, and a detailed description of the conditions. The description should address the actual subject matter of the funded activity and should be written by someone familiar with the substance of the agreement. It goes into the public disclosure record; institutions cannot submit it privately to the Department.

Confidentiality Flags

Section 117 does not require disclosure of proprietary research details, but it does require at least a general description of the subject matter being funded. Within the portal, an institution can flag a foreign source’s name and address as confidential commercial or financial information exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act.² The Department does not automatically honor those flags. Confidentiality claims fail when the institution has publicly acknowledged the same information through press releases, its website, or IRS Form 990 filings. The Department can release contested information over an institution’s objection after following its notice procedures.

Deadlines and the Reporting Portal

Reports are due semiannually, on January 31 and July 31.¹ When a deadline lands on a weekend or holiday, a filing on the next business day counts as timely. The January 31, 2026 deadline fell on a Saturday, so reports submitted by Monday, February 2, 2026 were on time.³

As of January 2, 2026, filing goes through a new dedicated portal at ForeignFundingHigherEd.gov, which replaced the previous system.⁴ The portal supports bulk uploads for institutions with many reportable transactions and uses role-based access, with a Primary Destination Point Administrator at each institution attesting to each submission before it is released to the Department. Submitted reports become part of a public database that anyone can search.

Fixing Errors After Filing

For reports submitted on or after January 2, 2026, corrections can be made directly in the new portal. For reports filed before December 16, 2025, the institution emails the Foreign Gifts Access Team to flag the earlier submission for withdrawal, then submits a corrected version through the portal.²

Not every small discrepancy requires a correction. A variance of 10 percent or less in a contract’s reported value is generally not treated as material. Qualitative errors always are: misreporting the country of attribution, omitting the description of a restricted gift, or failing to file at all because the total was miscalculated below $250,000 each require a corrected filing.

What Happens If an Institution Doesn’t Comply

Section 117 gives the government two direct enforcement tools. The Attorney General, at the Secretary of Education’s request, can sue in federal district court to compel compliance. For knowing or willful noncompliance, the institution must pay the full cost the government incurred in obtaining compliance, including all investigation and enforcement expenses.¹ Accidental errors may draw a court order; deliberate noncompliance adds a potentially large financial penalty on top.

Since 2020, the Department has also treated Section 117 compliance as a condition of participation in Title IV federal student aid programs. Through a Notice of Interpretation, it classified Section 117 reporting as a federal collection effort under the Program Participation Agreement that every Title IV school signs.⁵ A reporting failure can therefore be treated as a breach of that agreement, giving the Department authority to limit, suspend, or terminate an institution’s access to federal student aid. For most universities, losing Title IV eligibility would reach every student who depends on federal grants and loans.

Enforcement posture has been shifting toward more active oversight, following a February 2025 Inspector General report that found monitoring had been minimal and a 2025 executive order emphasizing enforcement.⁶ Institutions that let their tracking and disclosure practices drift should expect closer scrutiny than they saw in prior years.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 20 USC 1011f – Disclosures of Foreign Gifts
2
Federal Student Aid. Section 117 Foreign Gift and Contract Reporting Frequently Asked Questions
3
Federal Student Aid. Reminder To Use New Section 117 Reporting Portal To Meet Upcoming Jan 31, 2026, Reporting Deadline
4
Federal Student Aid. New Section 117 Foreign Gifts and Contracts Reporting Portal Supplemental Announcement Go-Live January 2, 2026
5
Federal Register. The Departments Enforcement Authority for Failure To Adequately Report Under Section 117 of the Higher Education Act
6
U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General. FSAs Oversight of Section 117 Reporting Requirements