FAQs

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General FAQs

Participant incentives are payments, often in the form of gift cards, given to volunteers or patients for their participation in a grant-supported project, program or research study. The purpose of the participants involvement is to benefit the researcher in his/her project. Participant incentive costs are included in the indirect cost calculation. Participant support costs are direct costs for items such as stipends or subsistence allowances, travel allowances, and registration fees paid to or on behalf of participants or trainees (but not employees) in connection with conferences, or training projects (2 CFR 200.75). The purpose of the participants involvement is for the benefit of the participants. Participant support costs are excluded in the indirect cost calculation.
  • New Proposal (UNM is Prime or Subawardee)
  • Limited Competition Proposal (the pre-proposal that is selected by the Limited Competition Committee)
  • Competing Continuation Proposal
  • Resubmission Proposals (UNM is Prime or Subawardee)
  • LOI/White Paper/Concept Paper with required budget and/or with or without a required signature from the UNM Authorized Representative
  • Funded Contracts not originated with proposal submission
  • Non-Disclosure Agreements
  • Property Agreements (fully executed copy will be sent to University Services; Inventory Control)
  • Non-Funded Agreements (MOU, MTA, data access, etc)
  • Supplemental Funding Requests
  • Award Institutional Transfers
The record should be routed when all required documents to be submitted are uploaded into Cayuse SP and a proposal review appointment is scheduled. If a Cayuse 424 record is included with the Cayuse SP record, the record should be routed when all required documents are uploaded and proposal review appointment is scheduled.
Our negotiated federal F&A cost recovery rate for on-campus research budgets is 51.5% of MTDC. On a budget requiring a reduced rate, F&A cost recovery is based on TDC. Unrecovered F&A cost recovery is the negotiated federal rate (51.5% of MTDC) minus reduced F&A rate (based on TDC). Imputed F&A cost recovery is what F&A would be on a cost share budget. I am working on a proposal application to a sponsor, who do I contact to assist with submission? Please visit our website to schedule your proposal review appointment: https://osp.unm.edu/proposals/schedule-your-proposal-appointment.html with a Proposal Specialist.
The authorization to sign proposals, awards and other non-financial official documents related to sponsored programs is vested in staff within OSP. Researchers should not sign any documents as the authorized University signatory.
No, you only need to submit a budget and budget justification if they were not included in the original subcontract and/or if they have changed.
Yes, you should notify OSP of any changes in key personnel
The SRF should be submitted to the Fiscal Monitor who supports your department or you may email the completed form to Contract & Grant Accounting at: indexcga@unm.edu

Award FAQs

An ABS is Award Budget Sheet. A copy of the ABS can be found at the following link: https://osp.unm.edu/forms/index.html
The ABS should be submitted to the Office of Sponsored Projects (mailto:osp@unm.edu) at Award Stage. Please note that an ABS is different from the Budget Template that is submitted at Proposal Stage
An ABS is reviewed carefully to determine that the budget categories are aligned with the award documents received and that the dollar amounts are correct. Therefore, an ABS is designed to designate how award dollars will be spent.
Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP) will process the award and route to Contract & Grant Accounting (CGA). CGA will need a PI Org Code to create an index number and an Award Budget Sheet (ABS) to set up the budget in Banner. Once the index number is created, the CGA will send the department a confirmation email. If the ABS has been received, the department can start spending on the index
Workflow runs nightly and checks for funds ending in 90 days. Please let OSP if you would like them to reach out the sponsor to initiate a no cost extension or if you don’t need a NCE to initiate the closing process.
Federal grants and contracts are award to The University of New Mexico (UNM), not directly to Principal Investigators. If a PI wants to change institutions, UNM will determine on a case-by-case basis whether it will retain, transfer, or terminate the award. As grantee institution, UNM must approve the relinquishment of the award and formally relinquish the award and equipment to the PI’s new institution. The awarding agency or sponsor must also approve all grant/contract transfers. NSF permits the PI to transfer the grant to a new organization, if both the new and the original research organization agree and the new organization meets the eligibility requirement of the grant. All transfers begin at the institution the PI is leaving and it is his/her responsibility to get the process started. The PI needs to notify OSP and stop all spending on the award as soon as is practical.

Cost Share FAQs

Cost sharing is the portion of the total costs of a sponsored project that is borne by UNM rather than the sponsor. This can take the form of salary support for project personnel or other material contributions such as funds to purchase equipment. It can also include third party cost share contributions in support of the sponsored project.

Mandatory cost sharing is required by the sponsor as a condition for proposal submission and award acceptance. A mandatory cost sharing requirement will be specified in the sponsor's published request for proposals.

Voluntary committed cost sharing is cost sharing that is offered in a proposal in a quantifiable manner but not required by the sponsor as a condition of proposal submission. Once offered by the institution and agreed to by the sponsor, it becomes an obligation the university must fulfill. The VPR position is that we do not contribute cost sharing voluntarily.

Voluntary uncommitted cost sharing is cost sharing that is over and above an amount that was committed and budgeted for in a sponsored agreement. It is neither pledged explicitly in the proposal nor stated in the award documents, but it occurs in the course of executing a project, often when an individual expends more effort on the project than his or her commitment requires.

Institutional support is usually described within the narrative of the application or as an official support letter. Institutional support does not have any quantifiable amounts but general statements about facilities or other support the university has available. Cost share is described in quantifiable terms, for example; Professor X will contribute 10% effort or The school will provide salaries for 2 graduate students for 1 semester.
The term matching often is a source of confusion. The National Science Foundation and some other sponsors explicitly indicate that they view the terms matching and cost sharing to be synonymous. In addition, OMB Circular A-110 refers to "cost sharing or matching" without distinguishing between the two. For the purpose of UNM policy and this guidance document, these terms are considered to mean the same thing. In some circumstances a sponsor uses one term rather than the other. Some types of awards are referred to as matching grants, including the National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grants and the Kauffman Foundation Entrepreneurship Grants. With such awards the sponsor may require the university to match the sponsor's support with an equal or proportionate commitment of funds. Some matching grants require that the additional funds be obtained from sources outside the university. Some are paid in installments, the payments coinciding with the attainment of pre-specified levels of funding. Matching grants are especially common in the sciences for large equipment grants, and they are standard practice in some government agencies. In the arts and humanities, matching grants may require additional layers of review, certification, and documentation in order to meet very rigid standards established by the sponsoring agencies. When required by the sponsor as a condition for proposal submission, this kind of matching is actually mandatory cost sharing. Awards with terms and conditions for matching may introduce administrative complexity, but they do not constitute a distinct class of sponsored agreements nor do the terms constitute a distinct type of cost sharing. When not required by the sponsor, an offer to match the sponsor's support is voluntary committed cost sharing.
An In-kind contribution is an item of cost for which institutional support is already in place, such as investigator effort; no new cash outlay is required. The most common form of in-kind contribution occurs when salary and fringe benefits paid by the university are committed to a specific sponsored project. By contrast, a cash contribution is a new, incremental cost such as for equipment, travel, or additional staff necessary to conduct the sponsored project, and for which a new funding source must be identified. The line between in-kind and cash cost sharing can be blurry, given that ultimately the two types may be indistinguishable to the sponsor when included in the proposal budget. And, indeed, it is not important to establish a firm distinction between the two types of contributions. However, among some administrators these terms are commonly used and in-kind contributions of salary and fringe benefits should always be an investigator's first choice when offering cost sharing in a sponsored project proposal.

A specific and quantifiable offer of cost sharing in a proposal becomes an obligation that the university must fulfill. Generally, the university seeks to minimize these obligations because a voluntary commitment to cost share:

Reduces a PI's flexibility to conduct other research/public service, because their effort is pledged to specific projects.

Increases the requirements for auditable record-keeping. Cost sharing imposes a substantial tracking, monitoring, recording, and documenting burden on the PI and university administrators.

Redirects departmental, school, or central resources from other mission-critical uses to support sponsored agreements. Every dollar of cost sharing results in the university forfeiting not only the recovery of a direct cost, but also the recovery of the associated indirect (facilities and administrative, or F&A) cost (except in the case of cost-shared capital equipment or tuition, for which there is no associated F&A).

Increases the university's exposure to audit liability. Cost sharing commitments are subject to audit. A failure to provide the level of cost sharing reflected in the approved award budget may result in disallowance of award costs, refund of award funds to the sponsor, and possible termination of the award. Typical audit findings involving cost sharing have pertained to:

  1. grantee accounting systems not capturing cost sharing identified with a particular project,
  2. failure to keep adequate source documentation for claimed cost sharing,
  3. unclear valuation of in-kind donated contributions, and
  4. lack of support for cost sharing contributions by sub- recipients.
Yes, NSF considers waived F&A& to be voluntary cost sharing and inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing in proposals to the NSF is prohibited.

Yes, cost sharing that is identified in the proposal represents a binding commitment if awarded, regardless of whether it is mandatory or voluntary.

I am concerned that my proposal will not be considered if I don’t show some voluntary committed cost sharing commitments.

If the proposal instructions include neither an eligibility requirement nor review criteria for cost sharing then there should be no advantage gained by including voluntary committed cost sharing. The Federal Register Vol. 68 No. 120 June 23, 2003 Section III, 2. Cost Sharing or Matching-Required states that agencies must state whether there is required cost sharing.