I've had requests to do this with travel and generally don't agree to it.
Travel usually takes signatures of the individuals who are traveling and I
don't want our faculty having to learn to navigate the travel authorization
and approval process of another institution or to wait for inordinately long
periods of time before getting reimbursed. If I were on the awarding end, I
would want to put their travel funds in the subgrantee's budget, as our
procedures for paying travel for non-employees are considered procurements
and have about three times the amount of paperwork. The PI would go from no
paperwork to a burdensome process if we didn't insist on the travel funds
flowing down.
How much additional work will it take your PI/Institution to get the
supplies you need through the prime? Also, is there a critical turn-around
time that may be jeopardized by having a "go-between?"If there will be one
or two major purchasing events, it may be reasonably efficient. But if you
need to make a lot of small purchases over the life of the award, you may
spend more administrative time making that happen than if you could purchase
on your own. If you end up spending that extra time and don't get the
indirect to cover the cost of that work, I would say that it is not in the
best interests of your institution to agree to this.
Ms. Barbara H. Gray
Director of Grants & Contracts
Valdosta State University
1500 North Patterson Street
Valdosta, GA 31698-0429
Telephone: 229-333-7837
Fax: 229-245-3853
Email: xxxxxx@valdosta.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On Behalf Of
Schmitt, Andrea L
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 12:26 PM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] Collaborator purchasing supplies for subcontractor to
avoid F&A
Good morning everyone. I'm Looking for opinions on this, please help.
I was asked to remove the supplies from our subaward proposal budget
submitted to a university. Their sponsored projects office said they
will put our supplies in their budget and have it shipped to us, thus
using their lower F&A rate.
This doesn't make sense to me, if we are using the supplies, we should
purchase them.
I know they are trying to avoid the extra F&A since the challenge grants
limit total costs to $500,000. Is this an acceptable practice? Do you
think their sponsored projects office really suggested this? I wonder
if any of them are on this listserv. Does anyone else suggest this
practice to their PI's?
I have to admit I'm also a bit peeved, I just finished submitting
everything, I have 17 other ARRA grants to work on and I don't' have
time to change their budget, Ugh.
Thanks
Andrea
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Andrea Schmitt
Grants Manager
Sun Health Research Institute
10515 West Santa Fe Dr.
Sun City, AZ 85351
623-876-5628
623-876-5461 (fax)
xxxxxx@bannerhealth.com
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