ORSP Newsletter

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that a new website, Research.gov, will soon be launched. Research.gov will take the place of FastLane for preparing, submitting, and reviewing future grants.
To prepare for the transition, the NSF has created the Research.gov Demo Site. To access the demo site, contact Mark Billingsley in the ORSP and he will forward the email with the link, or go to Research.gov>Research.gov Demo Site>Choose “PI Demo Site”.
Enhancements in the new Research.gov site include:
• The ability to view reports in HTML rather than PDF
• Products, organization and participants sections will be prepopulated.
• Progress reports pages will hide sections that previously took up screen space and were not critical (like progress indicators).
• Additional details on individuals will now be listed on “Print Preview”.
• The reporting period for Interim Project Report (IPR) will be editable. (This is not a required report.)
The demo site will not have actual reports. It will not send confirmation emails. Sample items in the demo site are clearly marked “Sample”.
Plans are for Research.gov to go live sometime in March. The Research.gov transition only impacts FastLane.
Additional Resources
• Research.gov Project Report Page
• Research.gov Online Help (available sometime in February)
• Research.gov Project Reporting Tutorial (coming soon)
• rgov@nsf.gov
• 800-381-1532

Facilities and Administration or F&A, also known as Indirect Cost, provides a valuable yet often misunderstood source of revenue to any university seeking external grant funding. F&A supports everything from the lights that switch on in a classroom to exclusively funding the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP). Funding the ORSP can provide a return on its investment by potentially generating additional future grant funding.

F&A is a percentage of certain grant costs negotiated through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Presently, ACU has negotiated an F&A percentage of 47.5% of salaries and wages for grants dispersed on campus and 28% of salaries and wages for grants dispersed off campus. So, hypothetically let’s say a department submits a grant in which they appropriately built F&A into the budget and wins the grant of $1 million. Of that, let’s propose that $100,000 is budgeted for salaries and wages for an on campus project. That means $47,500 of the total grant budget can be requested for F&A. Of the $47,500, 40% would go to support ORSP, 30% would go to the Provost’s Office, 20% would go to the department that submitted and won the grant, and 10% would go to the college where the department resides.

Some grants dictate a certain F&A percentage that is automatically calculated when the grant is submitted. If you apply for a grant with a predetermined F&A, then that percentage overrides the percentage that ACU negotiates with HHS.

Foundation grants may or may not allow F&A to be included in the grant request. If not specifically disallowed, grant seekers are asked to request at least 10% of the total budget in F&A or follow the HHS negotiated percentage and request 47.5% of salaries and wages be included as F&A.

While some may prefer to spend 100% of grant resources on the project itself, requesting the appropriate percentage of F&A benefits the entire university and adds to the potential that additional grants will be sought and funded in the future.