Proposal Reviews
What to Expect, What is Expected,
and How to Survive them
Presented by:
Office of Sponsored Programs – Pre-award
grants@uthscsa.edu; 567-2340
March 2015
When do we go to OSP for review?
If at least one of the following applies:
• Your proposal has a budget
• Your proposal requires an authorized signature from a
signing official
• Your proposal is being submitted in response to a
formal call for applications
We normally don’t need to review Letters of Intent (LOIs)
but we do if either of the first 2 items above apply. COPs
are not required for LOIs.
If you’re unsure, please always ask!
What if we are submitting a proposal
through the Office of Institutional
Advancement (OIA)?
Sponsors sometimes have special requirements,
such as if the applicant institution must be a
501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. If you are
submitting through OIA, you will work directly
with that office and OIA will contact OSP about
your proposal and provide us the items for our
review.
The Purpose of Proposal Reviews
• There are standards that must be enforced:
– Institutional policies
– Sponsor policies
– Federal government policies (when applicable)
• Our job is to make sure the parts we review
follow these policies and guidelines.
• We genuinely want to help your PI and the
institution get grant money.
Here’s what we want from you
•
•
•
•
•
signed Certificate of Proposal - latest version on OSP home page
Budget in the format as prescribed by the sponsor, with few exceptions
Budget Justification, if required by sponsor
copy of or a link to the sponsor’s Funding Opportunity instructions
If you have a subaward, we want its signed Intent to Establish a
Subrecipient Agreement form, Statement of Work, and a copy of the F&A
rate agreement (if applicable) in addition to the budget/justification.
• If we’re a subaward, we need to know what form of signed approval our
sponsor wants and we’ll need a Statement of Work in addition to the first
four items above.
• If something requires a signature from us, we need that completed form.
• If there is a form that has institutional information on it, we need to
review that, particularly if it mentions an Authorized Official, Grants
Officer, Fiscal Officer, Signing Official, etc etc.
We should have these items at least
THREE days before the deadline.
If we’re a subaward, this is THREE
days before our sponsor wants it
from our PI for its application.
(Some other institutions’ OSPs have a 10 day deadline
if you think you have it bad…)
Certificate of Proposal
• Internal document showing approval
• New version is mandatory as of January 1 – check
our website to make sure you are using the most
current version.
http://research.uthscsa.edu/osp/
COP (cont’d)
• Needs to be completed and signed by HSC
faculty-level investigators who have effort and
also their Chairs. If the PI is not faculty, he/she
still has to sign. Dean’s signature not necessary.
• Remember – the effort on the COP is based on
time committed to project, regardless if salary is
being requested.
• Effort should be in whole percentages, not with
decimals (e.g. 10%, not 10.5%; 2%, not 2.8%)
COP (cont’d)
• The deadline date on the COP should be when our
sponsor wants it from us, whether we are the prime
submitter or a subaward (e.g. if UTSA is submitting an
NIH grant for March 5 and they want the subaward
documents from HSC by February 26, then the
deadline on the COP should be 2/26, not 3/5).
• The majority of this information is entered into
PeopleSoft so it is important and it does matter.
• Does not get submitted to sponsors
• We may not always provide you feedback if the COP is
wrong. Typically we will just fix our copy when we log
out and we expect that you will fix yours once our
review is completed.
Basic Budget
• Institutional Base Salary (as of now, should not include
augmentation)
• Fringe Benefits
– 26% faculty; 30% staff; 10% students
•
•
•
•
Effort
Other Direct Costs (e.g. Supplies, Travel, Consultants)
Equipment and Tuition
F&A (aka facilities & administrative costs, indirects)
Budget (cont’d)
• The budget should only be submitted to us in one
format, normally in the format as dictated by the
sponsor.
• If we’re a subaward, find out from your direct sponsor
what format they want ahead of time, whether it’s in
Cayuse (if they also use Cayuse), on PHS 398 forms, in a
spreadsheet or on the SF424 Subaward Budget
Attachment forms.
• NIH Modular Budgets – we do not require an internal
budget until the time of award. At the submission
stage, we require the internal modular submission
form only.
Budget (cont’d)
http://research.uthscsa.edu/osp/forms_ut.shtml
Budget Justification
• Usually required with all applications
• Please make sure the justification matches
what is on the budget. For us, this is as
important as your budget adding up correctly.
• If your proposal is with the NIH, the effort
must be written in terms of calendar months
(or calendar months & percentages preferably
for those not full-time HSC). For most other
sponsors, just percentages are preferred.
Form Pages with OSP Info
• Where there is room, ALWAYS write out the institution
name in full, “The University of Texas Health Science
Center at San Antonio”. An acceptable abbreviated
version would be “The Univ of TX Health Science
Center at San Antonio”.
• Normally anything that’s Authorized Official, Grants
Officer, Signing Official, Fiscal Officer, will be “Chris G.
Green, CPA; Director, Office of Sponsored Programs”.
• Please do not use Chris’s personal email address or
direct phone number. Always use grants@uthscsa.edu
and 210-567-2340 for his contact information.
• See our Useful Institutional Information page on our
site.
http://research.uthscsa.edu/osp/propinfo.shtml
Sticky Wickets
(Or things that make you go
“Hmm…”)
Sticky Wicket – F&A
• F&A (if the sponsor allows it on the budget)
– Does the prime sponsor have an F&A rate stipulated in the
instructions?
– If not, what kind of sponsor is it? (e.g. federal or private)
– If Federal: Per our DHHS-approved F&A rate agreement:
• Modified total direct costs shall exclude equipment, capital
expenditures, charges for patient care, student tuition remission,
rental costs of off-site facilities, scholarships, and fellowships as well
as the portion of each subgrant and subcontract in excess of $25,000.
• On-campus vs. Off-campus (HSC owned/rented are on-campus; where
is more than half of your part of the project taking place?)
• Research vs. Public Service
– If Private/Non-Federal: use 26% if F&A is allowed and sponsor
does not have its own rate.
– If Non-Federal, we normally take F&A on Total Direct Costs,
including equipment, tuition, subawards, unless the sponsor has
its own stipulations.
• If you’re unsure what to use, please contact us. Sometimes
we have to call the sponsor to double-check if it’s not clear.
Sticky Wickets –
less than 100% appt’d faculty
• HSC/VA Joint Appointed faculty and parttimers
– When budgeting salary, only budget their actual
HSC compensation rate based on their
appointment percentage, not the salary as if they
were 100% HSC.
• (e.g. Dr. X has an HSC compensation rate of $50,000;
50% HSC appointment, annual salary if he were 100% is
$100,000. You budget him with $50,000 base salary.)
Sticky Wickets (cont’d)
• HSC/VA Joint Appointed faculty and part-timers
(continued)
– Effort for these types of employees should be written as
“____ % of his/her _____% HSC appointment.” So for
example, if an Assistant Professor/Research was part-time
and requesting all of his allowable/available HSC effort,
you would put “98% of his 20% appointment.”
– HSC/VA Joint Appointed – the MOU blurb inserted into NIH
proposals has been modified to make this clearer.
– For proposals that require use of calendar months, use this
example to calculate the effort: 10% effort of a 0.5 FTE 12
month appointment equals 0.6 (CY) person months
(12 month appointment x 0.5 FTE x 10% effort = 0.6 CM)
• Our Assistant Professor above would be 12 x .2 x .98 = 2.35 CM
Cayuse
• Software program used to submit federal proposals to the
sponsors. Available to all UTHSCSA employees on our
website (HSC username/password to log in).
• Preferable to downloading application package from
grants.gov (autofill features, budget calculations, etc.)
• Most federal proposals can be submitted using this; if you
can’t find the opportunity, you can download it yourself or
ask your OSP reviewer.
• There is a Test version available; please use this if you want
to play with the system. Only ‘intend-to submit’ proposals
should be created in the live Cayuse version.
• Cayuse instructions available on our website – upcoming
training planned, revised instructions in the future
Cayuse (cont’d)
Quick Cayuse Tips
• If you use the routing chain, please note that all
of the form pages must be filled in (e.g. budget,
key personnel) and the Budget Justification must
be uploaded. You can route it without any other
attachments at this point in time.
• Before you route it, make sure there aren’t any
form page errors that need to be corrected (e.g.
radio buttons not clicked on, missing typed-in
information). Click the Save icon, then Final
Review and check the Errors/Warnings/Info
before you route.
Cayuse Tips cont.
• You do not need to retract the approval on an alreadyapproved Cayuse proposal if you are only changing out
attachments unless it’s the Justification. We do not get
a notification when a proposal has been retracted. If
you are changing form pages or the justification
without our prior knowledge, please advise your
proposal reviewer what changes you have made.
• If after the proposal is submitted the PI wants to make
changes, please allow us to submit the
changed/corrected application. There is a process
involved that if not done correctly, will snowball into a
huge problem once the revised proposal gets to the
eRA Commons (or other federal sponsor’s system).
What we ask of you…
• Please review the sponsor’s instructions carefully.
If you’re unsure of something, contact us. If you
have a question for the sponsor, we will normally
contact them for you unless it’s about the science
of the project.
• If you don’t agree with something, tell us! We’re
human too and we make mistakes. Or we may
know of a policy issue that you may not.
What we ask of you…(cont’d)
• Please be patient if we don’t get back to you
immediately, particularly for proposals that aren’t
due for a week or so. For most of the year, there
are deadlines just about every day and those
proposals must get our immediate attention.
• If after checking our Contact list you aren’t sure
who should handle something, email
grants@uthscsa.edu. Provide as much detail as
possible in your email.
There are always exceptions…
• As with anything, there are exceptions to the
rule. -Sometimes a policy in place for a
previous submission no longer exists or has
changed. -Or we may have reviewed
something incorrectly the first time and for
the resubmission, we want to make sure it’s
done right. -Or there was no time for a full
review and we had to submit as-is and for the
next proposal, we want to correct those
issues.
Resources
• Funding Opportunity instructions and sponsor
website - some of them put out FAQs or general
application instructions as well.
• If using these particular application packages:
– SF424 RR Guides (General, Fellowship, SBIR/STTR, Supplemental)
– PHS 398 Guide
• For Federal proposals: OMB Guidance, NIH
Grants Policy Statement as applicable
• OSP website
• Your OSP proposal reviewer
After the proposal gets submitted…
• Give yourself a pat on the back
• Please be sure to email us a copy of the complete,
submitted proposal for our files within a week of the
deadline unless we were involved in the actual
submission (i.e. we clicked Submit) or if it was done
in Cayuse. If COP was incomplete at time of review,
forward us the completed/signed version ASAP.
• Take a deep breath and get ready for the next
deadline!