My Pre-Award colleague and I are seeking your collective wisdom. Has anyone ever had this problem or do you have particular high-level insight?

We have a faculty member who is about to receive a NIH R43 sub from the industry partner. At JIT, we learned that the prime didn’t use the correct breakdown %, so their solution was to reduce our budget to the required 33% but then request a 7% fee for themselves. The final budget to the NIH was not shared with us. This faculty member was on the e-mail trail, but apparently didn’t understand the effect of the budget cut and now says the work can’t be accomplished with the reduced amount in and of itself.

The following section of the GPS seems to apply – 18.5.4.2. The fee applies …”not to any other participant; however, in accordance with normal commercial practice, the SBC may pay a profit or fee to a contractor providing routine goods or services to the SBC under the grant.”

QUESTION: We’re ruling out the obvious inclusion of the fee in the sub amount to us, but - could a separate service agreement – with full transparency, of course – be set up from the prime for the purpose of routine supplies and/or animal costs?

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_18/18.5.4_allowable_costs_and_fee.htm

 Thank you!

Margaret T. Murray
Post-Award Research Administrator III
Research Administration Services, Hospital Specialty Services
Emory University, 1762 Clifton Rd, Atlanta, GA 30322
404-727-5156
xxxxxx@emory.edu

http://ras.emory.edu/ras-units/ras-hospital-specialty%20services%20/index.html