Frequently Asked Questions

The institutional policies permit only full-time faculty/staff to submit a grant and serve as GGC principal investigator / project director (PI/PD).

Yes, ORSP encourages the use of Pivot (create account or login), a funding database, to begin your quest for funding.

Fringe benefit costs are the employment-related benefits associated with FICA (social security); FICA Med (Medicare); Health and Life Insurance and Retirement and other costs as defined in the BOR Business Procedures Manual. The Office of Business and Finance provides established rates to utilize in preparing program budgets that require fringe costs to be included.

If allowed, the grant’s budget should include the current rates for the employer’s portion of the fringe benefits. Current rates as of July 1, 2019 (July 21, 2019 to June 30, 2020) are as follows:

FICA Medicare: 1.45%

FICA Social Security: 6.20%

Teacher’s Retirement System: 21.14%

Optional Retirement Plan: 9.24%

Rates starting July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 are:

FICA Medicare: 1.45%

FICA Social Security: 6.20%

Teacher’s Retirement System: 19.06%

Optional Retirement Plan: 11.81%

Only FICA Medicare is applied to part-time employees working on a grant.

Although the scope of activities considered as total college effort may differ among individuals, the following activities provide general guidance as to what would be considered part of college effort.

Included:

The individual's time spent on research, instruction, administration, or service is included.

Excluded:

Excluded are any income that an individual is permitted to earn outside of duties.

Effort reporting is a process designed to ensure that effort committed to a sponsored activity is confirmed after the fact as having been performed as committed or at some other level. The committed effort is indicated in the award. Effort for a sponsored project is considered in the context of all institutional responsibilities. Significant reductions in effort (ordinarily ≥ 25% of committed effort, or absences of three months or longer in duration) typically require prior approval from the sponsor.

ORSP uses the Uniform Guidance Compensation Confirmation (UGCC) report  for all federal grants. The UGCC report is certified by the principal investigator/project director or the co-principal investigator/project director on an after-the fact- annual basis that the salary and wages charged to their sponsored projects, including committed cost share, are accurate and reasonable in relation to the work performed for the Reported Time Period. GGC's UGCC report was created since the Uniform Guidance's preamble (Federal Register, volume 78, #248, 12/26/13) identified certain flexibilities for institutions to help reduce burden on institutions by focusing on: (1) Performance over Compliance for Accountability (II.2); (2) Innovative models and cost-effective approaches by strengthening the requirements for internal controls while providing administrative flexibility for institutions (I.A); (3) Advances in technology (sophistication of internal controls) that allow for alternatives to previous requirements (e.g. examples of effort reporting) that can provide a higher standard of accountability without burdensome process (COFAR response to 200.430 Preamble comments).

For non-federal grants, ORSP tracks only the committed cost-sharing.  

Here is a partial list of grants or effort that ORSP does not track:

• Voluntary, non-mandatory work towards a grant
• Equipment and instrumentation grants for acquisition are not tracked, unless the sponsor requests to track the PI/PD and co-PI/PD’s effort for the installation, setup, and scheduling, among others
• Travel grants, fellowships, career awards, workshop/conference grants

ORSP tracks only effort that is included in the approved budget justification and/or the award letter as a mandatory cost-share or as compensated time.