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Initiating the Project Award

Notice of Award (NOA) Memo

When a Notice of Award (NOA) is received, the Grants Management office will process it. This includes a review of multiple federally mandated compliance checks. They will prepare and send a “Notice or Award Memo” to the PI and ORA staff to begin the review process. ORA staff will respond to most questions and ask for your input when required.

Advance FOAP

There are times when a grant period has started, but the university has not received the full paperwork to set up the FOAP (Fund, Organization, Account, Program). In these cases, please talk to ORA staff about the option of establishing an Advance FOAP. Note that the PI will need to provide an individual account, such as start-up or indirect cost recovery, as a back-up account to be charged, in case the award does not come through. We will work with you to assess and limit that risk.

New Award Meeting

When you first receive a grant, your research analyst will set up a new award meeting. These meetings typically last between 30 to 60 minutes depending on the complexity of the project being discussed. Your pre-award and post-award analysts will be present at this meeting to coordinate any information that needs to be shared between pre/post. In addition, during this meeting, your
post-award analyst will review the budget and budget justification with you, determine any immediate staffing needs and get started on spending. This meeting is a time for you as the PI to begin to think through how to operationalize your grant funds.

Rebudgeting

There are many occasions where rebudgeting of grant line items is both necessary and appropriate to properly conduct your research. For instance, you might have budgeted $10,000 in participant incentives but recently increased your goal for participant recruitment necessitating an increase in your budgeted line item for participant incentives. In this case, the best first step would be to call your post-award grant analyst and review the request. Your post-award grant analyst will be able to provide guidance on re-budgeting guidelines for your funding institution.

Post-award effort changes. Awards are frequently made at a lower level than requested. Reductions in effort for the PI and other college-based faculty may only be made with permission of the chair. In addition, remember that faculty effort is certified on a quarterly basis through the Effort Reporting System (ERS). This system is a legal agreement between the faculty member and the
union and must be taken seriously.

Sponsor pre-approval. Some sponsors, including NIH and most state contracts, limit the changes that can be made without their knowledge. This is to ensure, on their end, that the project will be able to continue successfully. Below is a list of budget changes for which NIH requires prior approval:

  • Changes in PI effort greater than 25% (For example, if you proposed 30% effort, a reduction of effort below 22.5% would require approval by the Program Officer) 
  • Reduction or increase in any expense category more than 25%
  • Change with subawardees
  • Change that would impact specific aims or scope of work.
Subawards

Establishing the paperwork needed to execute subaward agreements and then following through with review of subaward work and payment of invoices requires coordination between your pre-award and post-award research analysts.

ORA staff will work with you to determine if you want to issue the subaward for the amount proposed, or request a revised budget from your collaborator.

Once the budget and scope of work are confirmed, this is forwarded to the Grants Management Office. That office will create the subaward agreement, and pass along for signature. This is when your collaborator’s institution will set up their grant account. Then Temple will sign and set up the subaward PO in the Banner finance system.

Sometimes a collaborator would like documentation from Temple that a subaward is pending if they need an advance account to begin their work. For example, to start their own hiring process. ORA staff can assist in providing any requested documentation.