New Guidance on Proposal Processing after September 1, 2019

Dear SHARE Faculty,

Friday, August 16th you received a communication from SPO regarding changes to how the Sponsored Projects Office will review grant proposals starting September 1st. Faculty are responsible for reviewing the sponsor specific requirements of a proposal since SPO will focus on reviewing only the elements of a proposal that pose financial, audit, and/or policy risks for the University. 

Despite this change in campus policy, we'd like to continue to ask for your partnership in alerting SHARE Research Administration as soon as you intend on submitting a proposal. You can notify us about your intent to submit a proposal through our webform. Once we receive the preliminary information about your proposal plans from you, this will allow your RA to: 

• Review the Request For Proposal (RFP) and necessary instructions

• Provide the Principal Investigator (PI) with proposal checklist and outlines of administrative requirements

• Develop the budget and justification

• Develop current and pending support documentation

At a minimum, it would be best to provide your RA with the administrative component of your proposal 10 business days prior to the SPO deadline. 

The new change in campus policy requires faculty to submit the final administrative component of the proposal to the RA 7 business days prior to the sponsor deadline. If faculty are unable to meet this deadline, the proposal may not receive any RA review and will likely be submitted to SPO "as-is" on the due date of 4 business days prior to the sponsor deadline.

Four business days prior to the proposal deadline, SPO will review sponsor solicitations and guidelines to verify institutional eligibility and that no terms/conditions described in the proposal guidelines or related documents will prevent the submission of the proposal/acceptance of a future award.

In addition, SPO will review Berkeley proposals to confirm:

• Institutional approval of limited submission proposals
• Costs are appropriate/justified under federal cost principles and/or UC policy
• The F&A rate and base is appropriate/calculated correctly
• Any deviation from the federally negotiated F&A rate has been justified/uploaded into Phoebe
• All university rates included in the budget are accurate (e.g. fringes, GAEL)
• The amount and source of any/all cost sharing is approved/documented.
• University identifying information is correct on sponsor forms
• Statements/disclaimers/other information provided about the University are accurate (e.g. F&A rate, A-133 Audit, the University’s definition of a year, etc.)
• All required internal forms and documents are provided (e.g. letters of support/participating from named consultants, subrecipient commitment forms, Fair and Reasonable Cost Analysis and Sole Source Justification for Federal Contract proposals.)
• No other institutional risks need to be addressed by the PI/Dept. before submission (e.g, export control, human subjects, animal subjects, and conflict of interest.)

See Overview of Institutional Proposal Review by SPO for more information

The technical portion of the proposal may continue to be in draft form until 8 hours prior to the sponsor deadline. 

Upon receipt of the final proposal from the PI/RA, 8 Business Hours prior to the deadline, SPO will verify that all institutional questions/issues previously identified have been resolved and that no submission errors identified by available sponsor software will prevent the successful submission of the proposal.

RAs in SHARE are committed to providing proposal support to all the faculty we serve. With the increased volume of proposals it is becoming very difficult for RAs to provide thorough support if they do not receive adequate lead time. Thank you for letting us know of your intent to submit a proposal as early as possible and for completing your final administration component no later than 7 days prior to the sponsor deadline.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact us at SHARE_research@berkeley.edu. 

Sincerely, 

Henry Chan, RA Manager

Teal Sexton, Regional Director

Max Auffhammer, Regional Associate Dean

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