We hope this page will help you answer commonly asked questions as you go through the proposal and grants management process at the University of Delaware. Choose a topic below to view questions that are commonly asked and then click on a question to expand its answer. If you have additional questions that are not covered here you can contact the Research Office or find your representative in our research administrator’s directory.
Proposal Development and Submission
Getting Started

Am I eligible to serve as a principal investigator (PI) on a research proposal?

What is a conflict of interest and do I have a conflict?

Where can I find Funding Opportunities?

What should a researcher do before submitting for funding? Or I've found a funding opportunity that is the right match for my research. What are my next steps?

How do I develop a competitive proposal?

The solicitation requires that my proposal be submitted electronically. How do I obtain access to various electronic submission site (example: Fastlane, ERA Commons, NSPIRE, etc)?

How do I route a proposal approval form for signatures?

I found a solicitation that limits the number of proposals that can be submitted. What is the UD Research Office proceedures on Limited Submission Proposals?

Do pre-proposals require UD Research Office approval?

I am preparing a letter of intent, does it have to be signed by the Research Office?

Who at University of Delaware signs as the authorized representative for proposal applications?

What basic information should be on the SF424 for a Grants.gov proposal submission?

What are the important points I should know when preparing an NIH Grants.gov application?

Where do I find more information about NIH Grants.gov application procedures?

Where can I find the NSF Grants.gov application guidelines?

Where do I find information regarding sponsor guidelines?

How do I construct a budget?

Proposal Preparation

Am I eligible to serve as a principal investigator (PI) on a research proposal?

Where can I find research funding?

I've found a research opportunity that is right up my alley. What are the next steps?

How do I develop a competitive proposal?

My proposal has been funded! Now what do I do?

What is the difference between Post Doctoral Fellow and Post Doctoral Researcher?

How do I gain secured access to the Grants system for proposal submission and inquiry?

I have a Post-Doc listed in my NSF proposal budget. What should I include in my Mentoring Statement?

I am preparing a NIH application that involves human subjects and I see there is an entire section of the Research Plan that is devoted to Human Subjects. What should be addressed in this section?

How do I know if I should add a project to my proposal for an individual in another department?

What approvals are required to add or remove projects from an approved proposal?

Proposal Submission

1. How do I obtain access to People Soft grants module?

2. How do I go about getting a letter of support for my research project from the UD administration (Deputy Provost for Research Office, Provost, or President)?

3. When do I need to route a Proposal Approval Form for signatures?

4. Do Pre-Proposals require Research Office approval?

5. I am preparing a Letter of Intent, does it have to be signed by Research Office?

6. What is the process for faculty to gain access to Research.gov?

7. Who at the University of Delaware signs as the Authorized Representative for proposal applications?

8. What is the procedure for a Sponsored Research Program Income?

9. How to avoid common problems and increase submission success regarding PDF documents?

Cost Sharing

1. What is cost sharing?

2. How is cost sharing accomplished?

3. Why does the University need to track cost sharing?

4. What types of expenditures may be cost shared?

5. What types of expenditures may not be cost shared?

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7. Can a discount provided by a vendor be used for cost share?

8. Can you provide some examples of language in a proposal that would or would not be considered cost sharing for accounting and reporting purposes?

9. What should happen if the award funding is reduced?

10. Are other sponsored funds used on a project considered cost sharing and if so, how are they tracked?

11. How do I know what indirect cost rate (also known as the Facilities and Administrative, FandA, rate) to use to calculate for the cost shared budget?

12. What do I do when I have a proposal with cost sharing of both faculty effort and other costs (equipment, supplies, etc.)?

13. How do I request equipment cost share funds?

Cost Sharing: Graduate Student Tuition

1. Are International transaction fees an allowable expense to a grant?

2. May the processing and filing fees for an H1-B visa be charged to a sponsored award?

Electronic Research Administration (ERA)

1. What basic information should be on the SF424 for a grants.gov proposal submission?

2. What are the important points I should know when preparing a NIH grants.gov application?

3. Where do I find more information about NIH grants.gov application procedures?

4. Where can I find the NSF grants.gov application guidelines?

5. Is the University of Delaware registered in Grants.gov?

General University Grants (GUR)

1. What is a no-cost extension?

2. What is the project period?

3. How do I apply for a no-cost extension?

4. What information will I need to include in my no-cost request?

5. What justification for no-cost extensions (reasons) is the Research Office likely to accept?

6. Under what conditions is the Research Office likely to deny an extension request?

7. Am I allowed to purchase an item not included in my original proposal?

8. How do I request a budget reallocation?

9. What information will I need to include in my reallocation request?

10. How do I get my expenses (including salary) paid?

Internal Grant Opportunities FAQs (GUR, UDRF and UDRF-SI)

1. What is the project period?

2. What is a no-cost extension?

3. How do I apply for a no-cost extension?

4. What information will I need to include in my no-cost request?

5. What justification for no-cost extensions (reasons) is the Research Office likely to accept?

6. Under what conditions is the Research Office likely to deny a request?

7. Am I allowed to purchase an item not included in my original proposal?

8. How do I request a budget reallocation?

9. What information will I need to include in my reallocation request?

10. How do I get my expenses (including salary) paid?

11. Questions about Internal Grant Opportunities?

Sponsor Specific

1. May an NSF Graduate Fellow receive supplemental stipend?

2. What is a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)?

Subcontract, Consultant or Vendor

1. How do I know when the service I require is a subcontract, a consultant or a PO to a vendor that I need in my budget?

2. What difference does it make to my budget whether it is a consultant, vendor or subcontract?

3. How do I initiate the subcontract once my award has been funded?

4. Why does it sometimes take so long to get my subcontracts once the award arrives at UD?

5. I just got an invoice from the sub-contract recipient. What do I do?

6. How do I initiate a Consulting Agreement?

Project Management
Allowability of costs

1. Are meals that do not include travel allowable on a grant or contract?

Allowability of Fees

1. Are International transaction fees an allowable expense to a grant?

2. May the processing and filing fees for an H1-B visa be charged to a sponsored award?

Automated Closeout Report (ACR)

1. Who is authorized to generate an Interim Report?

2. Who is authorized to generate an Automated Closeout Report?

3. Who initially receives a Closeout Report?

4. Who is authorized to view or work on a Closeout Report?

5. Who is authorized to receive a forwarded Closeout Report?

6. Who receives the Closeout Reports for multi-project awards with multiple departments (multiple projects)?

7. What if only one or some of the projects on a multi-project award need to be closed?

8. Who do I contact with questions about the Closeout Report, or for assistance with technical difficulties?

9. I can' find my Closeout Report using the Search for Closeout Reports section, what's wrong?

10. I received an ACR but there is a no cost extension or renewal pending, what should I do?

11. I received an ACR for an already completed closeout, what should I do?

12. When is the ACR due?

13. Do I hold the ACR until the final technical report has been submitted?

14. What happens when I click on the submit button at the end of the form in the routing and authorization section?

15. When I use a lookup window to search, I only see 10 items listed from which to choose?

16. The grant ended 7/31/10 and July F&A and fringes are showing up as “after the end date,” even though they are for the previous month?

17. I have a really long list of unallowable transactions, but I don’t think they are really unallowable?

18. For subcontract activity, why does some activity listed not have a PO#?

19. Can the ACR be forwarded to non-university personnel, for example to have a subcontractor attach their final closeout documents?

20. If we are the contractor on someone’s grant is there any difference with regards to how the ACR should be processed?

21. What if I get an error message that my documentation file is too large to attach to the ACR?

22. Does the ACR address all issues which need to be reviewed for closeout?

23. I need to update some sections of the ACR after it’s been submitted to the Research Office?

24. The forms look a little different from the last time I logged in?

25. What do we do about after end date or unallowable charges that have already been removed?

26. Is there a specific naming convention for attachments?

27. What evidence is needed for final report submission?

28. Can you cut and paste into the comment section(s)?

29. What is the difference between a status of “Unsent” versus “New”?

30. If the project/purpose has a “D” in the title can departments assume that the award/project is closed?

31. Can departments still access the report to later add proof of final technical report submission?

32. Does the department need to contact RO to have the report re-routed to them?

33. Can you provide more information on purpose project conflict section of the ACR?

34. I entered a project id into the search screen and received no results. Why?

35. How do you retrieve an ACR, either one that’s new or one you have been working on?

Billing and Closeout

1. What is the difference between a cost reimbursable and fixed-priced contract?

Effort

1. How do I report cost-shared (a.k.a. match) effort on a project if the funding source has its own project ID?

2. Can I send a carbon copy of the form to another administrator?

3. What is IBS?

4. How does routing really work?

5. How do I revise an old (Paper SAR) Effort Certification?

6. Is effort reporting really that important?

7. What kind of effort must be reported?

8. What does the 5% tolerance level mean?

9. Wasn’t the tolerance level 25% at some point?

10. How do you calculate a month of summer salary?

11. For a proposal, how do you calculate a dollar value for a committed effort percentage?

12. Why do we annualize a salary to calculate a value for committed effort? Or, why do we equate one month to 8.3% effort?

13. What are my responsibilities as an effort administrator?

14. How can I ensure that the data on the report is accurate?

15. What if the person was paid from projects belonging to a different department?

16. How can a report be completed if the employee is not available to certify his/her report?

17. What constitutes ‘suitable means of verification’?

18. How can I verify effort made by someone I don’t even know?

19. What if I need a report that is being held by someone else?

20. What if the effort administrator role should be transferred to someone else?

21. Why doesn’t the status of the report change to ‘complete’ when I certify it?

22. Why won’t the report allow me to choose ‘certify for former employee’?

23. Why can’t the employee certify their report after I’ve sent it to them?

24. Why does this report show negative effort?

25. What if I need to transfer salary charges belonging to an effort period which has already had its reporting completed?

26. Why doesn’t the group status say ‘complete’ if all its reports do say ‘complete’?

27. Must a PI report effort during a no-cost extension period for a grant?

28. What if a PI does not spend summer salary which was budgeted for him/her?

29. What if a salary payment is made in an effort reporting period after the period in which it was earned?

30. What queries can help me as an Effort Administrator?

31. How does the NIH salary cap affect budgeting and effort reporting?

Travel: Fly America Act

The Fly America Act requires that all federally funded travel be on a US flag carrier or US flag carrier service provided under a code-share agreement. This applies to all aspects of the travel. http://www.udel.edu/research/pdf/fly-america-act.pdf

Fly America

1. When should the Fly America waiver checklist be completed?

2. Where can I find the Fly America Waiver Checklist?

3. What supporting documentation is required to support the Fly America waiver checklist when a non- US air carrier is used during travel?

4. What if the Waiver Checklist wasn’t completed prior to the travel?

5. If there are several ‘legs’ to the travel, do all ‘legs’ have to be compliant with Fly America?

6. What if there are several legs on a trip (example 4 different legs) and only two are charged to a sponsored project funded by federal funds?

7. How do I know if a flight is code-shared and compliant with Fly America?

8. Do I need to adhere to the Fly America Act or the Open Skies agreement if the travel on my sponsored project is funded with non-federal funds?

9. If there is a code share agreement between a foreign airline carrier and US airline carrier, does this mean that ALL flights are compliant under Fly America when traveling on the foreign airline carrier?

10. What is not considered an exception to the Fly America Act?

11. Does UD recognize travel to Canada as domestic travel?

12. Does the awarding of frequent flyer points or miles make my flight Fly America compliant?

13. If I use a foreign air carrier that is part of Star Alliance, am I compliant?

Open Skies

1. When did UD adopt Open Skies as part of the University’s Travel Policy Number 3-7?

2. Where can I identify the countries included in the Open Skies agreement?

3. How do I know when additional countries have joined the European Union as part of the Open Skies agreement?

Please note: Travelers using Department of Defense (DOD) are not permitted to take advantage of Open Sky Agreements. Travelers using DOD funds must use an American carrier, unless they qualify for an exemption as noted in FTR 301‐10.135, sections (a), (d), (e), (f), and (g).

Regulatory Affairs
Export Regulations


1. What is an export?

2. What is a “Deemed Export”?

3. What are Export Controls?

4. What is the ITAR?

5. What is the EAR?

6. How does the EAR work?

7. What are “Specially Designated Nationals” and restricted parties?

8. Aren’t Universities exempt from the Export Control Regulations?

9. What is a technology control plan?

Foreign Nationals

1. May the processing and filing fees for an H1-B visa be charged to a sponsored award?

Training

Research training resources and opportunities abound at UD. We encourage you to visit our training page to sign up for our latest seminar or explore the resources available. 

Forms

We have forms available from across the campus collected under one roof that deal with research at UD. Discover what is one click away.

Policies / Procedures

Policies and procedures for conducting research at UD can be found here. Explore these resources to aid in your research success.
ASSISTANCE

Compliance Hotline
Phone: (302) 831-2792

UD Research Office
210 Hullihen Hall
Newark, DE 19716
Phone: (302) 831-2136
Fax: (302) 831-2828
Contact us

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