I recently spoke with a faculty member who has his primary appointment  in our
 VA
affiliate, and a secondary appointment in our academic school of medicine.  He
told me he had just received a call announcing he was granted an American Heart
Association nat'l grant-in-aid; he needed some administrative information from
me (fringes, idc rates, policies,etc.) to determine if he was going to route the
award through my institution.  His project involves human subjects and animal
research.

Since we had never reviewed a grant application from him, I asked him how this
was possible.

He explained that 'due to political reasons' he was asked to submit the
application through his recently formed VA Medical Research Foundation.   He
said        that due to budgetary cutbacks, research foundations are being
 formed in
most of the academic affiliated VAs across the country;  they administer small
drug company awards and gift/development funds.  AHA awards though are subject
to many of the same strict requirements that the NIH/federal awards have.  The
VA faculty member also explained that the VA foundation has not yet administered
any payroll, and he didn't know if this was going to be a problem        .

Are others aware of "VA Research Foundations" being formed across the country?
Since this is the first I've heard of this, I thought I'd bring it to the
attention of the list.  Any commentary/information would be appreciated.

Thank you,
Kathleen
xxxxxx@smtplink.mssm.edu