Grants Administration

Administrative Support

MET Finance and the Dean’s Office are available to support faculty considering sponsored research proposals with grants management throughout the project lifecycle. We can help navigate proposal review and submission, award acceptance, managing an award, compliance, award closeout and more. Though the proposal-development process varies according to the format of the proposal, the applicants’ available time, the complexity of the proposed project, and numerous other factors, several steps are common to all applications submitted by MET faculty. In order to allow sufficient time for necessary internal review and approvals, and to allow time to navigate complex online submission systems, please notify MET Director of Finance Karen Molloy (molloyk@bu.edu; 617-358-2737) of your plans a minimum of three weeks prior to the sponsor deadline so that she can provide important MET and University policy/process guidance to ensure the strongest chance of success for your submission.

Pre-Award

Sponsored programs consist of funded projects covering a range of activities including research, teaching, training, and services. The project may be supported by a number of different sponsors, such as federal agencies, state agencies, private foundations, corporate or industry, or non-profit organizations.

Grants and Sponsored Projects – A sponsored project is any externally funded activity that has a defined scope of work or set of objectives which provides a basis for sponsor expectations. Generally, a sponsored project involves a written agreement representing the voluntary transfer of money or property by a sponsor in exchange for specifically enumerated performance of services, often including rights and access to results of this performance, and some formal financial and/or technical reporting by the recipient as to the actual use of money or property provided. Such agreements are enforceable by law, and performance is usually accomplished under time and fund use constraints with the transfer of support revocable for cause.

Subaward means an award provided by a pass-through entity to a subrecipient for the subrecipient to carry out part of a federal award received by the pass-through entity. It does not include payments to a contractor or payments to an individual that is a beneficiary of a federal program.

Finding Funding

Funding comes from a variety of sources, including government agencies, foundations, and corporations. Chasing opportunities can lead to questions and paperwork. Boston University is proud to offer the Pivot service to any faculty or staff with an @bu.edu email address. This database is updated on a daily basis and offers a wide variety of federal, non-federal, foundation, and private funding opportunities for any discipline. With the BU subscription, members can save search criteria and receive weekly updates on new and upcoming funding opportunities.

BU faculty are changing the world. BU Profiles is an open-source Profiles Research Networking Software that supports research networking and expertise searches. It enables individuals (either internal or external to BU) to locate researchers by subject matter, name, institution, department, division, faculty, etc. This tool is a new way to network and collaborate with BU faculty.

Proposal Preparation

No two grant applications are the same. Review the requirements for your proposal, which may include any of the following:

Financial Conflict of Interest (FCOI)

Financial conflicts of interest (FCOI) in research may occur when outside financial interests compromise, or have the appearance of compromising, the professional judgment of a researcher when designing, conducting, or reporting research. FCOIs are not inherently bad and do not always lead to biased behavior.

Review BU Research Support’s policies and information to become familiar with federal requirements, university policy, and actions required from BU investigators.

Please note: BU’s research conflict of interest disclosure process has transitioned to Huron COI as of March 2023. Updated procedures are available at the BU Research Support Compliance page.

Post Award

Award Setup

After the award notice is distributed to the PI, award data is entered into the Kuali Research system and transmitted to SAP to facilitate the creation or modification of internal orders. In most cases, accounts are setup within 5 days of award receipt or as applicable, the final execution of agreement with the sponsor.

A PI who would like to request an advance account should complete an IPAR form, have it signed by the department chair or dean, and submit it to the Office of Sponsored Programs.

Pre-award costs are permissible under most federal grants and allow the institution to incur certain costs up to 90 days in advance of the actual award start date, or in advance of delayed receipt of an award. In the event that the award is not forthcoming, the department or school will be responsible for any pre-award costs incurred.

Pre-award cost for contracts may not be institutionally approved; however, the contracting agency may authorize pre-contract costs if negotiated by Sponsored Programs and accepted by the agency.

Things to Look For

• Do you recognize all of the individuals who were paid? Is anyone missing?
• Are the salary charges correct?
• Are your subrecipients invoicing?
• Do you have an appropriate burn rate? i.e., spending too fast or too slow?
• Is the budget amount correct?
• Are there any expenses you do not recognize?
• Did any expense on your award require sponsor prior approval? Did you retain said approvals?
• Were all expenses for goods and services received during the period of performance?
• Do you have annual progress report due within the next quarter? Do you have more than 25% of the current year budget unspent?
• Are expenses reasonable, allowable, and allocable?
• Where and how do I move an unallowable cost?

Carryover and No Cost Extensions

In some situations, where you have remaining unspent funds near the end of a project period, you can use appropriate justification to request a carryover of those funds into the next budget period or a no cost extension to your project period.

• Carryover – Unobligated funds remaining at the end of any budget period that, with the approval of the sponsor or with automatic carryover, may be carried forward to the next budget period to cover allowable costs of that budget period. There must be a bona fide programmatic need justified for the use of carryover funds in the next budget period.
• No Cost Extension (NCE) – Extends the project period beyond the original end date with no additional funding. Allowed when: the end of the project period is near; there is a programmatic need to continue research; and there are sufficient funds left to cover the extended effort.

Your department administrator and Sponsored Programs Research Administrator work together on these requests on behalf of the PI.

Rebudgeting

Rebudgeting may be required throughout the life of the project. In some cases, re-budgeting will have to be approved by the sponsor. In some cases, departments want to re-budget their award in order to align budget with expenditures. This is not a requirement by the sponsor; however, it is something that departments can work with their Sponsored Programs research administrator to achieve. Common examples of when a sponsor requires a rebudget could be if the Principal Investigator changes the scope of the award, a rebudget to achieve the new goal may be necessary. The change in scope and the budget request must be submitted through the Sponsored Programs research administrator for sponsor approval. Most common changes of scopes are the PI is changing their effort by greater than 25% and a subcontract is being added that was not in the initial budget.

Personnel Activity Reports (PARs)

A Personnel Activity Report is the tool used to confirm that salaries and wages charged to the grant are reasonable in relation to the work performed as part of the funded project. The Federal government requires recipients of grants to maintain time and effort reports that reflect effort levels by employees on grants. The university provides effort reports to PI/PD’s twice a year which must be certified by the employee and returned.

FAQ