1. Top 10 Things that Can Go Wrong at the Department Level
First Year Assistant
Professor Grants Workshop
May 7, 2015
Pamela Ray, SRA
© 2013 Florida State University. All rights reserved

2. Number One
Failure to submit the proposal through Sponsored Research Administration
- Ever seen this occur? - Result of faculty member trying to speed up things - Takes a lot longer to do proposal review on back-end (SOW, budget, budget just., forms) - Potentially undo things committed in proposal. More difficult to go back to sponsor to say, "Sorry, we didn´t mean
what we said." Embarrassing! - In turn, you want to make sure proposal is signed off on by SRA - Making sure that we are not committing to do something we can’t commit to - Ex. Approvals for human/animal subjects, F&A rates, cost sharing - Want to make sure that proposal format is consistent with RFP requirements Best opportunity to succeed & be awarded
Consequences as stated in the proposal submission policy:
Proposals submitted without SRA/FSURF approval may be withdrawn.
Proposals submitted without SRA/FSURF approval that receive funding will not be accepted by the university or the research foundation unless an exception to this policy is approved by the Vice President for Research with an adequate explanation by the PI as to why the proposal was not submitted through SRS or FSURF

3. Number Two
Principal Investigators, Chairs and/or Deans signing and accepting award on behalf of FSU
Be mindful of who can legally commit the university to an agreement and who has signature authority for the university.
Sponsored awards are granted to FSU and not to the PI, chair, dean, or the Office of Research but FSU as a whole President Stokes gave a Limited Power of Attorney to VP for Research, Gary K. Ostrander, for sponsored projects matters. - He, in turn, has a Delegation of Authority from himself to several of us in the Office of Research, so we may sign most of the sponsored contracts/awards for the university. - If someone who does not have a delegation from the VP for Research signs a sponsored agreement on behalf of FSU, they are doing so without authority. - Can be committing FSU to something illegal or unallowable under FSU policy - Have to notify sponsor of lack of authority and have to ratify the contract to make it legally binding

4. Number Three Failure to obtain Chair and Dean approval for:
1. cost sharing commitments
2. requests for indirect cost waivers
1- Cost sharing:
By putting a promise to provide C/S in a proposal, it is an actual commitment by FSU.
If the chair or dean is unaware of the cost share commitment, the PI has jeopardized the project from the beginning.
If it is promised and not available, the department will either have to come up with it, or we will not be able to accept the award.
Generally, this is not one of those scenarios where asking for foregivness instead of permission is a good idea.
2- No VP/SRA approval of indirect cost waiver:
- While this problem will now be reduced greatly, since there’s a new federal trend to treat indirect cost waivers as an unfair competitive advantage over other institutions and the federal agencies are required to reimburse the university’s negotiated rate, it is not a good idea to skip getting your chair or dean approval on the F&A waiver request. - As is true with the C/S, F&A waiver requests need to be approved by the chair and dean and further approved by the VP before a promise is made to the sponsor that F&A will be waived. - Chairs and deans keep a close eye on SRAD funds generated for the department by F&A from sponsored projects, so they want to know up front about waivers, since waivers reduce the SRAD return to departments. STRESS: Not doing both of these will delay getting a proposal out; take care of this early in case you can´t get approval at the last minute.

5. Number Four
Performing work and/or delivering the results to a sponsor prior to receiving an award
If we start doing work on a project before having an award in hand, it puts the university at risk:
- No incentive for sponsor to pay or work with us, because the work has already been done - The terms and conditions could be unacceptable or even illegal - Contracts which arise due to verbal promises (even s) are generally unenforceable under the law, and even written promises that are not signed by both parties (creating a meeting of the minds) can be held unenforceable, so it is best not to rely on a sponsor´s promise to pay unless it is in a bilateral contract. - Unilateral contracts – just by starting work, you accept the terms of the contract

6. Number Five
Authorizing personnel without an appointment to work on a project
If somebody is asked to work on a project without an appointment, there are several issues:
Non-FSU employee with no affiliation to FSU – basically volunteering their time, and no volunteers should be working on a project unless they have completed and has an approved official FSU Volunteer Form - notifies FSU that someone is actually working for FSU and covers them under our insurance, workman´s comp, etc. If you´re not paying them and don´t have them registered as volunteer, you could be violating labor laws.
FSU employee - should not be committing effort to a project unless their chair and dean are aware of it. Departments need to know all commitments of their employees so that their Assignment of Responsibilities (teaching, service, student advising, research) will be correct.
Main point: Until someone is appointed on a project, do not let them work on the project!

7. Number Six
Subcontracting out more than 50% of an award and failure to identify relationship
The question becomes why are we the lead on the project. - Why didn´t the sponsor just issue the award to the entity to which we are giving more than 50% of the award? - Are they trying to circumvent procurement laws and taking advantage of our sponsored research exemption from the purchasing/bid requirements of Florida Statutes: (7) All purchases of a division of sponsored research shall be made in accordance with the policies and procedures of the university pursuant to guidelines of the Board of Governors; however, upon certification addressed to the university president that it is necessary for the efficient or expeditious prosecution of a research project, the president may exempt the purchase of material, supplies, equipment, or services for research purposes from the general purchasing requirement of the Florida Statutes. - As a result of some occurrences back in the 1990´s, then President Dale Lick issued a memo saying that legal counsel has to review requests to subcontract out more than 50% on any given award, because State of Florida agencies were trying to use us as a straw man, in other words, giving us money to give to others in order to avoid the bidding/state procurement rules. - They couldn´t under law directly issue an award to an entity, so they tried issuing the award to us so that we could do so. This is totally unallowable. - Even with non-State of Florida requests to subcontract out more than 50% of the award, it will be scrutinized by legal counsel, because it has to be determined if it is coming through FSU for a legitimate reason. - Ex. 25% of project staying here at FSU, but 75% being subcontracted to another entity. Questionable why it would be awarded that way. Seems fishy. - Ex. 25% of project staying here at FSU, but the 75% being subcontracted out is to 10 different entities. We are clearly the lead, so it might make sense to keep it here depending on the scope of work.

8. Number Seven Incurring Questionable costs: Unallowable costs
Cost transfers
Late purchases
Inappropriate charges on projects
- Under OMB Circular A-21(c), charges should be: allowable (consistent treatment under generally accepted ccounting principles), allocable (does it support/advance the work of this project), reasonable (fair price to charge the government). Ex. Training conference in Las Vegas for 300 General Services Administration which included a comic, a clown, a mind reader and a cost of $823,000 to tax payers ($2,743 per person). - A-21 (j) : Alchohol is generally unallowable as well as audit costs, bad debts, and food
Untimely initiation of cost transfers
- This is a red flag for auditors. - The big question is why was something charged to one grant and then moved to another grant. - If it didn´t support that grant, why was it there to begin with and not on the appropriate project? - It is FSU´s policy that all cost transfer requests be done within 90 days from the end of the month in which the error occurred. - What if the charge was incurred prior to receipt of the award? Reasonable and handled with an advance. The advance account is the project account when awarded and costs are incurred initially in the correct account. No cost transfer needed. - STRESS: If inappropriate charge even if on the wrong project by error, only 90 days to transfer to proper project; otherwise, it has to be transferred to a non-sponsored project. Goal is to ensure the sponsor pays all of the appropriate project costs. Late cost transfers shifts that charge to the university.

9. Number Eight
Certifying an effort report without “a suitable means of verification” (i.e., first-hand knowledge) of work performance
- It´s not always easy to keep track of what we have done with our time even when we personally did it - So it´s much more difficult to keep track of somebody else´s time. - In turn, OMB A-21 J(10) states that effort has to be certified by someone with "a suitable means of verification." - - There is a high burden of proof when it comes to showing the federal government that someone other than the employee him/herself knew exactly how much effort they were devoting to a project for an entire semester. - If it´s somebody besides the person certifying effort, they have to provide documentation of how they had first-hand knowledge

10. Number Nine
Failure to satisfy and/or properly document cost sharing commitments
- As mentioned before, cost sharing is an actual FSU commitment of resources and should not be provided unless required by the sponsor. - If we promise to provide cost sharing, we have to truly provide it and we have to document that we did it. - If we don´t provide it as promised, the award will generally be reduced, since we are not fulfilling our part of the bargain. - Likewise, if we fail to document our cost sharing commitments, it is as if we did not provide the cost sharing and will likely result in a reduction of the award. - If we had a 1 to 1 match requirement, for example, where we simply did not document our match commitments, we would likely not be able to keep any money for the award.

11. Number Ten Nepotism – PI employing relatives on a project
- There are many married partners with different last names which makes makes dealing with FSU´s nepotism policy a little difficult at times. Under the policy, no "related persons" can have a conflict of interest with one another (i.e., the one cannot have decision-making power over the other one with regard to salary, promotion, assignments, etc.). - Related persons are defined as spouse, parent, sibling, son or daughter-in-law, brother or sister-in-law, in-laws, and step-children. - It might okay, for example, to have two equally credentialed researchers working together in the same department on the same project if the department has a suitable means of managing the conflict and if it is approved by both the Chief Human Resources Officer and the President or VP/Provost. - It would likely not be acceptable under FSU´s nepotism policy to have a professor who is married to her lab assistant where they are on the same project, and the professor has decision-making power over the lab assistant spouse.
3. Nepotism
Employment of related persons in a single organization unit or in work-related organizational units is permitted provided that such employment will not involve a conflict of interest, including but not limited to participation by the related person in making recommendations or decisions specifically affecting the appointment, retention, tenure, work assignment, evaluations, promotion, demotion, or salary of the related person. "Related persons" are those related to each other in one of the following ways: husband; wife; parent; child; brother; sister; spouse of a child, brother, or sister; or parents, child, brother, or sister of spouse.
Requests for employment of related persons, including justification for a proposed appointment, should be submitted to the Chief Human Resources Officer for review. If endorsed, the request will be forwarded to the President or the Provost/Vice President responsible for the unit in which the relative will work, prior to the employment of related persons.

12. Questions ? Pamela Ray Sponsored Research Administration pray2@fsu.edu