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where to start | limited submissions | institutional data | budgets | approvals | collaborators
letters | conflicts of interest | routing | submitting | afterwards | boilerplate

Aside from internal competitions for IU funds, all grant proposals must be formally submitted through the university's Office of Research Administration (ORA). Unless you have received permission from ORA , you are not allowed to submit a grant proposal to any external organization or agency. In most cases, they take care of boxing and mailing hard copies or hitting "submit" for electronic submissions. What follows are some notes on what you must do to get that point.

Where to Start

The Sponsored Research Administration website is full of useful facts, forms, and guidance. This is a good place to start for many questions. If you can't find what you're looking for, call the ORA office at 855-0516 and ask to speak to a grant specialist.

Within the Department of Biology, Debbie Martindale and Eva Allen are both available to answer questions and provide grants support.

Limited Submission Programs

Some grant programs restrict the number of proposals that can be submitted by a single department, school, campus or even university. This should be explicitly stated in the program guidelines. For such programs, IU conducts an internal competition to determine which proposals may be submitted to the granting agency. Information about internal competitions is posted on the ORA website; be sure to look at the upcoming deadlines link. Unless otherwise indicated, the required material for an internal competition is a simple 1-page description of the planned proposal and a short (1-2 page) CV. Be sure you mention anything you'll need to arrange with the university, such as a financial commitment or additional space.

Institutional Data for the Cover Page

All the IU-related information that might be requested by an agency is listed on the ORA institutional data page. Highlights include:

Legal Applicant Name	The Trustees of Indiana University
Applicant Institution	Indiana University P.O. Box 1847 Bloomington, IN 47402-1847 Phone: (812) 855-0516 FAX: (812) 855-9943 E-mail: rugs@indiana.edu
Authorizing Official	Steven A. Martin Associate Vice President for Research Administration Indiana University P.O. Box 1847 Bloomington, IN 47402-1847 Phone: (812) 855-0516 FAX: (812) 855-9943 E-mail: rugs@indiana.edu
Entity Number (EIN)	35-6001673
EIN for NIH and some other applications:	1-356001673-A1
DUNS Number	00-604-6700
Congressional District (Bloomington)	9th
NIH Institutional Profile Number (Bloomington)	577805
NSF Organization Code (IU)	0018093000

Budgets

A grant specialist at ORA will have to approve your budget before you will be allowed to submit your proposal. It is a good idea to send your budget to ORA a week or two in advance, so that the routing and sumission process is not slowed down by budget problems at the last minute. At the very least, they ask for 5 business days for budget review, and 3 days for full proposal review. If you're not sure how to start working on your budget, ORA has sample files you can download from the ORA forms page.

Fringe benefits. Fringe benefits are charged on all appointed staff, hourly non-students, and faculty summer salaries.  A mandatory health insurance is charged on each graduate student listed in the budget.  Fringe and health insurance rates change periodically. You can find the most current numbers for fringe rates, mileage and per diem on the ORA rates page; the fringe rates for 2009/10 are as follows:

Faculty summer salary	23.54%
Academic, Postdoctoral & Research Associates, professional staff & scientists on grants	34.72%
Technicians (secretaries) – biweekly appointees	35.46%
Hourly non-student employees working > 1000 hrs/yr	18.96%
Hourly non-student employees working < 1000 hrs/yr	7.04%
Health insurance for all grad students (RAs & fellowship recipients)      * Project future health insurance fees using a 5% annual increase. To split by semester, first semester insurance is $789, and second semester is $1287 and covers the summer as well.	$2078*
Academic & professional staff on COST SHARE and non-C&G accounts	40.47%

Fee Remissions. All proposals must include a graduate student fee remission for each student listed in the budget (unless student has more than 90 credit hours).  This entry should appear in the “Other” category in the budget.  These rates are set by the College and are not subject to indirect costs (F&A).

For grants with F&A, graduate fee remission levels may be charged at the in-state rate (note that this may change for grants submitted after December 2009). Grants with no F&A must charge gradaute fee remission at the full out-of-state rate. A full year of graduate support requires 30 credit hours. Check on the latest rate for graduate credits in the graduate school on the IU Bursar's tuition and fee rates page. The 2009/2010 graduate school rate is $291.97/credit-hour for in-state, and $850.33 for out-of-state. Project the rate for future years using a 5% annual increase.

Facilities and Administrative Costs (F&A, formerly called Indirect Costs). The latest F&A rate agreement with DHHS was signed on June 4, 2008.  The on-campus research rate is 54% for the period 7/1/08 – 6/30/11. All budget entries are subject to F&A costs with the exception of equipment (items more than $5K), fee remissions, and subcontracts or subgrants (only the first $25K is subject to overhead; the remainder is exempt from overhead).  All grants must include the negotiated F&A cost rate.  Some agencies such as American Chemical Society do not fund F&A costs.  Support from pharmaceutical companies or industry should also include the negotiated rate.  In the event they are unable to pay the full rate, the Chairman must concur beforehand, as well as the College and OVPR.  Any modification of this rate should be clearly stated on the route sheet with appropriate approvals identified.

Budget Approval. There are two ways to share a budget with ORA for review:

1. You may email your budget and justification to ORA (resdev at indiana dot edu) as attachments (excel, pdf, word, etc). Excel is preferred for the budget itself.
2. The NSF FastLane submission system allows ORA grants specialists to review your budget online. To take advantage of this capability, you must set "SRO Access" in the PI functions for a particular proposal, allowing ORA to view only, view/edit, or view/edit and submit.

Keep in mind that if you include funds for a collaborator at another institution, you will have to arrange a subcontract, with which ORA can assist you.

Agency requests for revised budgets require ORA approval prior to submission.

Research Subject and Materials Approvals

For the most part, research subjects approval from the Human Subjects Institutional Review Board (IRB) or the Bloomington Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (BIACUC) can be "pending" at the time a proposal is submitted. But the approval process must be complete before the university can accept an award. [As of October 2008, Curt Lively is our BIACUC representative from the department. He can endorse some paperwork, and may also serve as your advocate during protocol review if you discuss details (convincingly) with him.]

Materials clearances, such as for rDNA or radioactive chemicals, generally must be in place prior to the submission of a proposal. Be sure to check into any permissions you might need early in the proposal preparation process.

Collaborators

In most situations, you'll be asked to submit biographical and funding information for collaborators and project participants. Read the format guidelines carefully--NIH and NSF request different formats and different sets of information. The grant specialist at ORA who reviews proposal will ask you to correct formatting problems, such as listing too many publications or sysnergistic activities, or neglecting to list required funding information for collaborators.

Letters

Many proposals include some sort of letter, either offering endorsement for a project, agreeing to collaborate, or offering financial support--cost share or otherwise. It is accepted procedure to offer a draft letter to your letter writer(s); this ensures that all the important points are covered, and also speeds up the process of getting back a signed copy on letterhead. [Biology departmental letterhead is available upon request from the webmaster. Some sample letters are also available upon request.]

Cost Share: Keep in mind that in situations involving commitment of financial support from the university, if a dollar figure is mentioned in the letter, it usually must also be included in the budget as cost share. Cost share situations require additional oversight, reporting and finaincial management; therefore, to avoid a cost share arrangement if the program guidelines indicate that no cost share is required (for NSF, this phrase is interpreted as "please do not include cost share"), be careful that letters of support do not include dollar figures. Instead, retain documentation in your own files about the specific dollar values committed.

All cost-sharing or matching fund requests must be approved by the Chairman, who will then negotiate this with COAS and/or OVPR on your behalf, or authorize you to do this yourself.  Cost-sharing is normally handled by showing the University contribution to the PI salary and fringe benefits during the academic year for the fraction of the time the PI works on grant-related activities.  Any such cost-share request must be clearly identified on the route sheet with source, amount, and approvals clearly provided and arrangements finalized prior to routing. Written documentation (including emails) of OVPR or College support should be included as attachments on the proposal routing form in ERA.

The IU cost sharing policy is published as Important Notice 03-4. Visit http://www.ovpra.indiana.edu/cg/imp_notice/home.asp to view all Important Notices.

Conflicts of Interest

Be sure you have submitted a conflict of interest disclosure form before you try to route your proposal. This is not necessary for each proposal, but must be done annually. A copy is kept on file with the chair's office, if you lose track of when you last filed the form.

Routing a submission

Before a proposal can be submitted, you must receive approval from the Department of Biology (Eva Allen or Debbie Martindale do this on behalf of the chair), the College, and ORA using the university's Electronic Research Administration (ERA) system. [We're paperless: even though the routing form states otherwise, as of 2008, the department, College, and ORA no longer require that you submit hard copies of proposals that will be submitted electronically to the agency.]

You may submit an electronic route sheet through ERA as soon as your budget has been approved by ORA , even if the rest of your proposal is not ready to be submitted. You must include the final budget in the routing form as an attachment, as well as any materials documenting cost-share agreements, but no other proposal materials are required for the approval process. You should start the routing form approval process at least 2-3 days before the deadline, to allow sufficient time for all the approvals.

To get started in ERA, logon to onestart.iu.edu, select the "services" tab along the top, select the "administrative systems" tab on the left and then the ERA link that will appear under it, and then click the "access ERA" link in the body of the page. You will have to be added to the system as a user, which can take a day or two, so be sure to start this process in advance of your deadline. Eva Allen can help you with ERA routing forms, if you run into problems. TIP: Bookmark the starting login page for ERA once you've logged in through OneStart for the first time, so that you don't have to go through OneStart each time. A visual tutorial for completing an ERA routing sheet is available here: http://www.indiana.edu/~era/RF2004basic.swf.

Actually submitting the proposal

NSF and many other agencies now support completely electronic submission, so that no hard copies are necessary. However, some proposals for NIH and other agencies still require submission of hard copies.

It is no longer necessary to provide hard copies to the various offices that approve your route sheet. Usually, ORA takes responsibility for packaging and shipping proposals that must be submitted as hard copies, but you must supply the actual hard copies, and allow sufficient time for packaging and make sure that the proposal has been correctly routed. However, you may be required to make (and pay for) your own shipping drop-off if you're running close to the receipt date and the last pick-up at ORA has already occurred.

For completely electronic submissions, you should communicate with your assigned grant specialist at ORA to determine whether ORA or you is responsible for "pushing the button." For NSF proposals, ORA must do the final online submission, for which you must set SRO access to "read, edit and submit" in FastLane. For some other submissions, especially private granting programs, you are in charge of submitting the proposal, but you must receive authorization from ORA before you do so.

After submission

After your grant is submitted do not reread it. Odds are, you'll find an error and you can't change anything now, anyway. Instead, don't forget to:

• thank your letter writers and offer a copy of the proposal for their files (most won't accept)
• organize your electronic files, so that you can easily identify the file(s) of the final version of the budget, justification, narrative, etc.

Useful text:

Sample boilerplate text on various facilities of relevance to biological research is available as a Word file download. Please contact Eva Allen to share your own text or suggest additional sections to include.