The Office of Research Administration (ORA) serves many faculty members each year. In fact, over 1800 proposals are submitted annually; hundreds of proposals are often uploaded on the same date for major federal funding agencies. Uploading your submission is only one service that ORA performs. In addition, ORA performs a number of other vital tasks, including a review of key eligibility requirements by funders (and UM), a review of your budget’s accuracy, particularly for the calculation of correct indirect cost rates for UM and any subcontractors, and making sure that your proposal includes all required elements for the submission. Please contact your school's business office for assistance with budget preparation and for school-specific policies regarding grant preparation and submission before sending your grant to ORA. By submitting your grant proposal to ORA in advance of your sponsor’s deadline, we can help you submit a grant proposal with the greatest possible chance of competing successfully for funding.

You don’t need to specify an exact deadline. If you are planning to submit a grant proposal in the future, we hope that this information will give you a general idea of the types of circumstances that require additional time for review.

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Many grant proposals are submitted through grants.gov at the same time, especially for NIHl standard submission deadlines. Submitting the proposal within hours of the deadline increases the chance that your proposal will be rejected because the system has crashed or because there is an error processing your proposal. Even if the error is not the fault of anyone at UM, federal agencies rarely provide exceptions to the deadline.

Proposals that are submitted to private foundations can often seem simpler and less complicated, and this may be true from the perspective of a person writing a proposal. However, the university still has to provide the same assurances to foundations that the information (particularly as it relates to the budget) is accurate. Some foundations also have specific financial restrictions (i.e. allowable indirect costs are often reduced), and this requires additional time for review that are not needed for federal proposals.

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Any waiver of the full amount of indirect costs requires a review from the Office of the Vice Provost for Research. This review process takes a minimum of one business day, and the request may not be approved, which could require you to readjust your proposal budget. ORA will coordinate this review if needed.

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Cost sharing agreements must be reviewed by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the Office of Research Administration, the Dean of your College, and depending on the amount of the commitment, the Provost. This review takes a minimum of ten business days. If your proposal requires both cost-sharing and a waiver of the full amount of indirect costs, the coordination of reviews by the OVPR, ORA, and the Provost’s office will happen during this same time period. ORA will forward your request to the right administrators for their review.

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Any potential financial gains to you or your family members or friends needs to be documented and reviewed by Regulatory and Compliance Services before your grant proposal is submitted. You will receive instructions on how to initiate a review by the office of Disclosures and Relationship Management. Click here for more information.

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Any potential financial gains to you or your family members or friends needs to be documented and reviewed by Regulatory and Compliance Services before your grant proposal is submitted. Click here for more information.

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All members of your team need to complete the online COI certification before a grant proposal can be submitted. The URL is http://uresearch.miami.edu/regulatory-compliance-services/DPS/citi-coi-training. If there are no conflicts of interests and all of your team members have completed the training, there is no additional time needed to review your proposal. If your proposal has a potential conflict of interest, extra business days might be need for the review process. For questions, please contact Lori Hayes, PhD, Director, Disclosures & Conflict of Interest Management, Phone: (305) 243-5036 or email: l.hayes@miami.edu

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All members of your team need to complete the online COI certification before a grant proposal can be submitted. The URL is http://uresearch.miami.edu/regulatory-compliance-services/DPS/citi-coi-training. For questions, please contact Lori Hayes, PhD, Director, Disclosures & Conflict of Interest Management, Phone: (305) 243-5036 or email: l.hayes@miami.edu. If your project requires a review by Export Control Compliance, this will take an additional 1-2 business days. For questions, please contact William J. Collins, Director, Export Control Compliance, Phone: (305) 284-9558 or export control email: exportcontrol@miami.edu.

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While proposals involving subcontracts with other institutions and organizations are common, the budgets for such projects are more complex and may require a bit more time to review for accuracy. More importantly, you should make sure that any collaborating institutions submit their scope of work and budgets to you before you submit your entire grant proposal package to ORA. We recommend that you give your outside collaborators at least 2 weeks in advance of your ORA deadline to prepare this budget and get their institutional approvals. Please note that the business office at collaborating institutions may require that you submit the grant narrative and a detailed description of the proposed work to them so that they can prepare a budget that accurately reflects the research activities that your collaborators will be engaged in.

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All of your institutional letters of support need to be collected in advance and submitted to ORA at the same time as the rest of your grant proposal. These letters should specify the type of support that is being offered. Letters of support can take several weeks to gather, although the process can often be expedited if you are able to provide a draft for the signator to review and edit.

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If your project includes activities that will be performed by a Department Chair and/or Center/Institute Director, a signoff from the Dean is required. If your project includes a Dean, a signoff from the Vice Provost for Research is required.

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All PIs and co-Investigators must be full time faculty members. If they are not, their Dean, Chair, or Center/Institute director must provide a written statement with information about why this person is recommended as a PI or co-I. This memo requires institutional approval, which can take a minimum of one day to obtain.

You should submit your grant proposal to the Office of Research Administration by:

Additional information about UM policies related to the topics covered in this tool are available at ora.miami.edu.

What else does ORA do during the Pre-Submission Review Process?

In addition to a review of the issues above, there are other vital services that ORA provides in order to certify that our grant proposal submissions are complete, correct, and that the costs listed are accurate. During the pre-submission review process, the following criteria are assessed:

• Does UM meet the sponsor’s eligibility criteria?
• Does the PI meet the sponsor’s eligibility criteria?
• Does the sponsor require system/individual registration (e.g. DUNS, SAM, etc.)? If so, ensure all are in place and active.
• Does the sponsor have budgetary limitations? If so, does the application conform?
• Is the application consistent with the requirements, including (but not limited to) page limitations, document formatting, biosketch formatting?
• Does the application have the signatures from chairs, deans, institute/center directors?

Additionally, ORA reviews the proposal budget carefully, checking for the following items:

• Does the Funding Announcement require salary caps? If so, are the salary caps calculated appropriately?
• Are all budgetary items in conformance with the Uniform Guidance (reasonable, allowable, and allocable)?
• Does the budget add up correctly? (This is a common problem which results from revisions to drafts of a grant proposal and changes to the activities that are planned.)
• Is the F&A rate correct? Was it calculated correctly on each part of the budget?
• Does the budget include consulting or other services by outside subcontractors? If so, ORA reviews the scope of work, budget, budget justification, and sub-recipient commitment forms for each anticipated subcontractor.
• Does the budget justification align with the budget?

The Office of Research Administration serves many faculty members each year. In fact, over 1800 proposals are submitted annually. By submitting your grant proposal in advance of your sponsor’s deadline, we can help you submit a grant proposal with the greatest possible chance of competing successfully for funding.