Unlock the Power of Digital Signature Legitimateness for Notice of Promotion

How to eSign a document: digital signature legitimateness for Notice of Promotion

MARIO MARTINEZ: My name is Mario Martinez. And I'm with the NICHD Grants Management branch. I'm going to be talking today about the notice of grant award and disbursement of funds. I'm going to give an overview of the notice of grant award to talk about what is a notice of grant award, the components of the notice of grant award, how a notice of grant award is accepted, what can potentially delay the issue of a notice of award, and finally I'll talk briefly about the disbursement of funds. So what is the notice of grant award? The notice of grant award notifies the grantee that an award has been made or that a revision has occurred. The notice of grant award is issued each budget period and is sent to the business official via email. And it is also available in the eRA Commons to the principal investigator. Again, it is only sent to one person or office and that is a business office. For the PI to find a notice of grant award, they need to go into the eRA Commons and find it. So again, remember that this is very important because sometimes we get calls about principal investigators that they don't find the notice of grant award or wondering what happened. And it is available on the website. So if you're expecting a notice of grant award, please check your webpage on the Commons and you will probably find it there. The notice of grant award is a legally binding document. It includes the grant number, the PI name, the grantee institution, project title, the period of support, funding information, the federal policy, rules and regulations that apply, terms and conditions of the award, and includes a few helpful websites as well as NIH contact information. The notice of grant award has several components. It includes a cover page. Section one is the award data. Section two is the payment and hotline information. Section three has the general terms and conditions. Section four is the IC -- or institute-specific terms and conditions. And section five includes the contact information for NIH and itemized budget and the F&A rate. So before I start and give you the details of each of the elements of the notice of grant award, I'll just give you a sample of what it looks like. For those of you who have already received a notice of grant award, you're familiar with this. But for those who haven't, hopefully you'll see it soon. And this is what it looks like. Again, this is the face page. This is most of the information about the names and also who signs the notice of grant award, their signature is there; sections about the budget, the terms and conditions, et cetera; again, in the final section, the itemized budget. And again, this is just a sample of what it looks like as a whole document. But let's start and talk about each specific item. So, the cover page. The cover page provides an overview of the grant data. It includes the issue date, the institute that has issued the award, includes the grant number, the principal investigator's name, the project title, the budget and project periods, and the terms of acceptance. It also indicates where the notice of grant award was sent. So it includes the email for the business office. So when you look at the notice of grant award, you as a PI who has direct access, make sure that this information is correct. And that way, you know that it went to the correct place. If the business office email is incorrect on the notice of grant award, the business office will not get a copy of the notice of grant award. So again, this is important to check. And this can be updated by the institution and the eRA Commons. Section one of the notice of grant award includes budget information. It will indicate if you have any unobligated balance if applicable. And what is an unobligated balance? Well, an unobligated balance is those funds that you didn't spend in prior years. And in some awards, you need prior approval to use those funds. And assuming you are in that category, you would submit a request to carry over funds, and if that was approved, a revised award would be issued, and you would now show up here in this section of the budget. It also includes a future year funding, again just the total funding. And it includes the years -- 1, 2, or whatever the year might be. It also includes fiscal information, which is extremely important for the institution. It's a CFDA number and that's the catalogue of federal domestic assistance. And that's the number that the federal government uses to identify what type of research we are funding. But most important to you is the EIN or employee identification number and the document number. Why? The EIN number is the identification of the institution. It's like the social security number for the institution. So if the EIN number is incorrect, the notice of grant award might go to a different institution or might not go to you. Actually not even the notice of grant award, but the funds might go to a different place. So again, it's very important that this is correct. Also the document number is important because that would refer to this specific notice of award. So if it's used when the institution submits the financial reports or draws down any funding, they will have to know the document number. And it is in this page where you will find it. Also important is the fiscal year, as you will indicate what fiscal year the funds are coming from. On the last part of section one, you will find the information about the institutes who are funding this grant. In this case, in this example, it will be two institutes; HD, which stands for NICHD, and is providing $100,000. Again, this is just an example; and AI, the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is providing $8,000. And again, this is for this example. That's in section one. When we move to section two, this is a short section. But it's very important because it gives you a link to the hotline in case you have any problems or to the NIH Office of Extramural Research where you will find many of the terms and conditions that apply to this award. So although it is a small section, it is important. Section three indicates the general terms and conditions of the award. In this page, you would find information about the carryover. It will tell if you are under automatic carryover or not. As indicated before, if you have unexpended funds and you need to use them in the current year, if you are not under automatic carryover, you will need to request prior approval. However, if you are under automatic carryover, you do not need that approval and you will have access to those funds. And in this page, you will find that information. It tells you whether you are in or not. It will also tell you if you are under the SNAP, or the streamline noncompeting award process. Projects under the SNAP submit their noncompeting progress report electronically. And they usually don't submit budgets. And in general, the information provided is less than the ones that are non-SNAP. And again, you will know if you are or not by reading this section. It will also indicate if there's any co-funding. It showed two Institutes funding this grant. This is HD, NICHD and AI, or Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And in this page, you'll actually spell the names of the institutes that are funding this project. And that's called co-funding. And why do we need co-funding? What is co-funding actually? Well, we often use co-funding when we have a grant that is of interest to other Institutes. In this project, as an example, the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is interested in the research that's being conducted under this grant. So they decided to put some additional funds into it. And that's why the previous page should have showed how much money they put in. And then this page just reflects their names so they can get credit for it and you know also who's contributing to your research. And the final part of section three talks about program income. If for some reason this grant were to generate any income, it will tell you here how it is to be treated. Now let's move on to section four and probably the most important section. Why? Because this section talks about your specific grant, the specific project. Section three covers the terms and conditions, but talks about the general terms and conditions, and usually covers all grants. When we move in to section four, it talks about the terms for this particular grant. So it will tell you if there are any special reporting requirements. As usual with these grants, you are supposed to report every year. But for example, it might say, "We need a report every six months." And again, this will be specific to this particular grant, not to all the NIH grants. So again, it is important to read this section. It will show you the revisions. If the award is revised, it will indicate that it is revised and it will give you the reason as to why the award has been revised. It would also reflect any carryover. It will also include, which is very important, the restrictive terms that might require a specific action on your part before you can do any work on this project. For example, a restrictive term: in this example, it indicates that you cannot use funds until certain requirements are met. In this case, we're missing some information for, let's say, the principal investigator. So the award is issued, but it is telling you that although you have an award, none of the funds can be used until the requirements are met. And as indicated on the notice of grant award, it says that we will notify you once the requirements are met. We will notify you that those requirements are met and you can spend funds. Now let's move on to section five. And section five includes the staff contacts. It gives you the name, email, and telephone number of the grants specialist that's handling your award as well as the program person who's handling your award. It also includes, and it's very important, a categorical budget or itemized budget. It will tell you which category and how much each of the categories are funded for. And it talks about the F&A rate and the base and how it's calculated. So it's an important piece of information. So if you know how much you have for personnel, supplies, or travel, this is the place where it will tell you. And again, this doesn't mean that you cannot re-budget, but this just gives you a guide as to how the funds were provided. So if you have any reductions, you will see where the reductions were taken. So now we have covered the whole notice of grant award. Now you have the notice of grant award. Does that mean that you have already accepted an award? Well, not really. The award is not accepted until the funds are drawn down when the funds are taken. So even though the award is there and it's ready to be used, until the institution takes money out of the account or draws down funds, the award has not been accepted. So this is important because the institution needs to know what they're getting into. So you get the notice of grant award. They can read it. And if they agree to the terms and conditions, then they can draw down funds. Once they draw down funds, they are basically signing the contract. It's like a signature. They are legally bound to comply with what the proposal indicated they were going to do. Some of the delays for an award. Usually when an award is delayed, it's because of a lack of response to questions that we have, late submission of required documentation, incomplete or inaccurate documentation submission, inadequate justifications, and/or missing assurances. So when you are expecting an award, even if you're not expecting an award, every time you receive a request or inquiry from NIH, it is important that you respond as soon as possible because if you don't, it might delay your award or it might stop the funding of your award. So again, it is imperative that you respond as soon as possible so we can move forward and issue awards. Now let's talk about payments. So you received an award. You read it. You agreed. Now you want to draw down funds. How do you do it? How does this happen? Well, nowadays all funds are requested electronically through the payment management system, or PMS. And I've provided the website. So again, all funds are provided electronically. There's no more check in the mail. There's no more wire transfer or anything. It's electronic. The funds are delivered via an electronic transfer. So they're automatically deposited from the NIH or the payment management system into the institution's account. The payments can be requested as often as needed, but must accommodate only the immediate needs. So what does that mean? It means that you can only request as much funds as you need. You cannot request advance funding. For example, if today or tomorrow was the end of the month and you needed to pay salaries, it will be fine or acceptable to request funds to cover all the salaries for the staff to pay them for today or tomorrow. However, it would not be okay to draw down salaries for next week or two weeks or next month. You would have to wait until next week or next month to draw down the funds. So basically you draw the funds as needed. You cannot take any funds in advance. And that's the advantage of the electronic transfer and it's immediate. So you request the funds, and the funds will be there within 24 hours. So there's no waiting. Now to get these funds, of course you need to have an account and have the systems in place. And for that you need to register with the payment management system. And I'm providing the forms that are required for you to register with the payment management system. These forms are required if you don't have an account with the DHHS. Or even if you have an account and you have a change in the bank or banking information, you need to resubmit the forms so the information is correct and the payments can be sent to the right place. Let's move on to payments and the exchange rate. There's been a change of policy. The old policy used to be that whenever the FFR was submitted at the time, you had to use the currency exchange rate at the time of submission. That has changed. Now the currency rate used is the one that you use when you draw down the funds. So again, that's a significant change. Before it used to be once a year when you submitted your FFR and the currency could have fluctuated a lot in that whole year. But you had only one. You had to submit the rate that was in place when you submitted the FFR. Now you probably will use multiple rates because you will apply the rate whenever you draw down the funds. That's the rate that must be used. Now some of the things have not changed and again this is very important. It's important particularly for foreign grantees that they're strongly encouraged to use a U.S. bank or a bank that has U.S. branches. That will make the transfers and funds a lot easier. The requirement for grantees to maintain grant funds in an interest-bearing account still remains. Any interest in excess of $250 per year must be returned to the U.S. by reimbursement check. That's still in place. However, we don't expect to see that happening that often as you are drawing funds now as you need them. So really there's no need to -- there will hardly be any excess funds because you are covering all your expenses as you're incurring them. And that's all I have to say for today. So thank you very much for your attention.