When a prime recipient organization issues a federal subaward, it is legally required under Uniform Guidance, 2 CFR 200.332 to evaluate each proposed subrecipient‘s risk before issuing an award — its most recent Single Audit results, indirect (F&A) and fringe rates, suspension/debarment status, and financial-conflict-of-interest (FCOI) compliance, among other things. Collecting that information one subrecipient, one form, at a time is one of the largest sources of duplicated paperwork in research administration. The Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) Expanded Clearinghouse exists to remove that duplication: a single public repository of institutional profiles that a pass-through entity (PTE) can query instead of re-collecting the same data from every subrecipient on every subaward. This guide covers what the Clearinghouse contains, who can use it, how it differs from the separate FDP FCOI Clearinghouse, and how it fits into a subrecipient monitoring workflow.
What the FDP Expanded Clearinghouse is
The Federal Demonstration Partnership is a consortium of more than 230 US academic institutions and roughly 10 federal funding agencies that develops consensus-based tools to reduce research-administration burden. The Expanded Clearinghouse, run through the standalone site fdpclearinghouse.org under FDP’s Research Administration Committee, is FDP’s answer to a specific piece of that burden: the subrecipient-information collection a PTE has to perform before issuing a subaward and again during ongoing monitoring.
Instead of a PTE sending an entity-information questionnaire to each subrecipient it works with — and each subrecipient filling out a slightly different version of the same questionnaire for every prime institution it subcontracts with — participating organizations publish one certified profile to the Clearinghouse. Any PTE can then look up that profile instead of requesting the same data directly. FDP describes the Clearinghouse as a single web-based repository intended to let PTEs “obtain and review all necessary subrecipient entity information and conduct subrecipient entity monitoring” without the send-and-collect cycle that paper-based data collection requires.
What a Clearinghouse profile contains
Each organizational profile is certified correct by an authorized institutional official and typically includes:
- Single Audit information — results and date of the organization’s most recent Single Audit under 2 CFR Part 200, Subpart F.
- Facilities-and-administrative (F&A) and fringe benefit rates — the organization’s current federally negotiated indirect-cost and fringe rate agreements.
- Suspension and debarment status — confirmation the organization is not excluded from federal awards.
- Financial conflict-of-interest (FCOI) policy status — whether the organization has a PHS-compliant FCOI policy in place (this can also link out to the separate FCOI Clearinghouse — see below).
- Federalwide Assurance (FWA) number — the organization’s human-subjects research assurance, where applicable.
- Federal identifiers — Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), EIN, and CAGE code.
- Authorized official and compliance contacts — the people a PTE would otherwise have to track down individually.
Profiles are publicly viewable without a login, so a PTE’s subrecipient-monitoring staff can look up a subrecipient’s profile directly rather than waiting on a response to an emailed questionnaire.
Who can participate
Participation requires an active SAM.gov registration, a willingness to publicly share the organization’s F&A rate agreement, and agreement to FDP’s Profile Participation Agreement. FDP member institutions participate automatically as part of membership; non-member institutions can join for an annual fee, with new non-member organizations invited once per year (historically in June/July).
Historically, Clearinghouse participation was limited to organizations subject to the Single Audit requirement — generally, entities that expend $750,000 or more in federal awards in a fiscal year, per 2 CFR 200.501. Beginning in 2025, FDP opened participation for the first time to organizations that are not subject to Single Audit (referred to as NSAP, or non-Single-Audit-participant, entities), extending the Clearinghouse’s usefulness to smaller research organizations, foreign institutions, and other entities that fall below the Single Audit threshold but still need to document compliance status to the prime institutions that subaward to them. Institutions considering NSAP participation should confirm current eligibility criteria directly with FDP ([email protected]), since this option is still relatively new.
Expanded Clearinghouse vs. FCOI Clearinghouse
FDP operates a second, narrower clearinghouse that is easy to confuse with the Expanded Clearinghouse: the FDP FCOI Clearinghouse. The two serve different scopes and different populations:
- The Expanded Clearinghouse (fdpclearinghouse.org) covers the full range of subrecipient entity information listed above — audit status, rates, assurances, federal IDs — and is limited to organizations that complete the Profile Participation Agreement (FDP members automatically; non-members for a fee).
- The FCOI Clearinghouse covers financial-conflict-of-interest compliance specifically, and is open more broadly: it accepts self-certifications from institutions that are not Expanded Clearinghouse participants, while also surfacing the FCOI status already on file for institutions that are Expanded Clearinghouse participants. In effect, the FCOI Clearinghouse is a single lookup point for FCOI compliance across both populations, whereas the Expanded Clearinghouse is the fuller entity-profile system that FCOI status is one field within.
A PTE checking whether a prospective subrecipient has a compliant PHS FCOI policy in place should check the FCOI Clearinghouse first; a PTE doing a fuller subrecipient risk assessment — rates, audit status, assurances, and FCOI together — should check the Expanded Clearinghouse.
How the Clearinghouse fits into subrecipient monitoring
Uniform Guidance requires a PTE to evaluate each subrecipient’s risk of noncompliance before making a subaward (2 CFR 200.332) and to monitor that subrecipient’s activities throughout the award period (2 CFR 200.332(d)-(e)). The Clearinghouse does not replace that risk assessment — a PTE is still responsible for its own monitoring determination — but it removes the slowest part of gathering the inputs to it. A sponsored-programs office that already has a subrecipient’s F&A rate agreement, most recent audit result, and FWA number on file via the Clearinghouse can move directly to its own risk-scoring step rather than first chasing that documentation down. This is the same underlying problem — duplicated, form-by-form collection of entity data across every subaward relationship — that FDP’s standardized subaward templates address on the agreement-drafting side; the Clearinghouse addresses it on the entity-information side.
For an institution that is itself the subrecipient rather than the PTE, maintaining a current, accurate Clearinghouse profile has the reverse benefit: it reduces the number of individual data requests that show up from every prime institution it works with, since primes can pull the certified profile directly.
Frequently asked questions
Is the FDP Expanded Clearinghouse only for FDP member institutions?
No. FDP members participate automatically, but non-member organizations can also create a profile for an annual fee, subject to FDP’s yearly invitation window for new non-member participants.
Does a Clearinghouse profile satisfy an institution’s Uniform Guidance subrecipient monitoring obligation?
Not by itself. The Clearinghouse supplies certified entity information — audit status, rates, assurances, and similar data — that a pass-through entity can use as an input to its own risk assessment and monitoring plan under 2 CFR 200.332. The PTE remains responsible for making and documenting its own risk determination.
What is an NSAP entity?
NSAP stands for non-Single-Audit-participant — an organization not subject to the Single Audit requirement (generally, one that expends less than $750,000 in federal awards in a fiscal year, per 2 CFR 200.501). Beginning in 2025, FDP opened Expanded Clearinghouse participation to NSAP entities for the first time; organizations should confirm current eligibility directly with FDP.
How is the Expanded Clearinghouse different from the FCOI Clearinghouse?
The Expanded Clearinghouse is the full entity-profile system (audit status, F&A/fringe rates, assurances, federal IDs, and FCOI status together). The FCOI Clearinghouse is a narrower, more broadly accessible lookup limited to financial-conflict-of-interest compliance, open to institutions that are and are not Expanded Clearinghouse participants alike.
