Contracts & Grants Overview

The Yellow Cluster's contracts & grants specialists are dedicated to assisting faculty with pre-award and post-award items such as grant proposal submissions, funds management, and ensuring grant award compliance. Assistance is also available for summer salary, course buyouts, and direct charge effort requests.

Psychology and Center for Mind & Brain (CMB) Contracts and Grants Information

For more information about Psychology & CMB grants and contracts services please see topics below or contact your department's analyst. 

Philosophy and STS Contracts and Grants Services

For more information about Philosophy & STS grants and contracts services please visit the LS Research Center website, or contact your department's analyst.

Pre-Award (Grant Proposals)

• General Notes About Proposal Submissions
• - Please work with your contracts and grants analyst within your department for submission assistance including budget preparation.
  - Please do not submit proposals without first obtaining UCD's Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) approval/sign-off.
  - Proposals must be submitted to UCD's Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) at least 5 business days prior to the proposal due date in order to allow for proper review of the proposal.
  - All Grants.gov applications are submitted using Cayuse 424: https://ucdavis.cayuse424.com/
  - Helpful link: https://spark.ucdavis.edu/
• Internal Documents Required for Proposal Submissions
• - Cayuse SP online forms- general proposal information: https://or-forms.ucdavis.edu/
  - All internal proposal documents (budget, budget justification, abstract, and conflicts-of-interest documents) must be submitted to SPO using Cayuse SP
  - Form 800 (federal sponsor)- conflicts of interest (accessed through Cayuse SP)
  - 700U (other sponsors)- conflicts of interests (accessed through Cayuse SP)
  - Request for Exception to Policy on Eligibility to Submit Proposals (required for PI's that are students, postdocs, or are new and not yet affiliated with UCD)
  - Subrecipient Commitment Form required for proposals that include sub awards: https://research.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/UCD_Subrecipient-Commitment-Form_final.pdf
• Other Documents Required for Most Proposal Submissions
• - Budget
  - Budget Justification
  - Project Narrative (NIH)
  - Specific Aims (NIH)
  - Project Summary/Abstract
  - Project Description/Research Strategy
  - References Cited
  - Biographical Sketches
  - Current and Pending Support for NSF
  - Other Support for NIH
  - Equipment
  - Facilities
  - Cover Letter (NIH)
  - Human Subjects Detail (if applicable)
  - Vertebrate Animals Detail (if applicable)
  - Letters of Support
  - Multiple PD/PI Leadership Plan- NIH (if applicable)
  - Resource Sharing Plan (if applicable)

Post-Award Items

• Processing New Grant Awards

- If a grant proposal is funded, the sponsor will send the award information to the UCD's Sponsored Programs Office (SPO).
- Once SPO has processed the award documents, they will notify UCD's Contracts and Grants Accounting (CGA) office. They will also notify the PI. Awards can be viewed is Cayuse SP by logging in using his/her Kerberos ID and password at https://ucdavis.cayuse424.com. CGA will establish a fund number that will be provided to the awardees' department contracts and grants analyst.
- The department analyst will then use the fund number to establish an account and will contact the award PI providing him/her with account and award details.
- CGA will deposit all funds into the account and will provide financial reports to the sponsor as required.
-If human subjects are used for the project, IRB protocol numbers must be established.

• More information can be found at http://research.ucdavis.edu/policiescompliance/irb-admin/ 

- If animals are used, animal protocol numbers must be established.

• More information can be found at https://iacuc.ucdavis.edu/protocol/index.cfm 

- If a sub-award needs to be distributed, the department analyst will work with the PI to complete a sub-award request form and submit to SPO.

• Account Balances and Projections
• - Account balances can be viewed anytime using https://my.ucdavis.edu/ and logging in with a Kerberos ID and password. 
  - Once logged into my.ucdavis.edu there will be a list of options that can be clicked on. One of these is called "Contracts and Grants." If this link is not seen, it can be added by going to page settings at the top right of the page. There will be a drop down arrow and there will be the option to "add tile." Once "add tile" has been clicked on, a "find tiles" search field will pop up. Type in "grants." This will bring up the Contracts and Grants tile. Add this to view.
  -If weekly account balance reports are needed, the department contracts and grants analyst can generate a report through Decision Support that automatically gets emailed (the dates can be changed to what the faculty member prefers). 
  - The contracts and grants analyst in each department can provide account projections. Each faculty member should meet with the department analyst to decide what projections and what style of report helps them best.

Summer Salary

Summer Salary is available for 1/2 of June, July, August, and 1/2 of September (maximum of 3 months).

• Summer Salary Details

• One month of summer salary is equivalent to 1/9 of salary.
  
  Sometime in May the department contracts and grants analyst will send an email out to faculty asking for details about any summer salary that will be taken.
  
  If more than 2.5 months of summer salary will be taken, then the department Chair or Center Director approval must be obtained. The department analyst will provide a Word document template to the faculty member that can be used for drafting the approval request. The letter will then be returned to the analyst who will work with the Chair to obtain approval. 
  
  Once all approvals are obtained and funding is verified by the analyst, he/she will work with the Academic Unit Shared Service Center (AUSS-C) to enter the summer salary into the payroll system.
  
  **If summer salary exceeds sponsor salary cap amounts, only the cap amount will be paid to the faculty member.

Course Buyouts

In January, the department contracts and grants analyst will send an email out to faculty asking for details about any course buyouts that will be taken from grant funding.

• Course Buyout Details
• - Course buyouts can be taken for Fall, Winter, and Spring.
  - The salary cost for a course buyout is equivalent to 1/9 of annual salary.
  - The max number of buyouts that can be taken in a year is 2 (assuming a normal 4 course teaching load).
  - Each buyout will be paid out over a 4-month period and will be paid out as 33.33% of each month's academic (9/12) salary.
       - Fall: 7/1-10/31
       - Winter: 11/1-2/28
       - Spring: 3/1-6/30
  **If the course buyout salary exceeds sponsor salary cap amounts, the department will cover the over cap amount.

Salary Recovery

Salary recovery is when a faculty member's academic (9/12) salary is charged to his/her grant rather than charged to the department. 

• Salary Recovery Details
• - A portion of the salary that did not have to be charged to the department gets returned to the faculty member as salary recovery funds (gets deposited into an account and the funds can be used for research). Currently the faculty member received 75% of the salary portion that was charged to the grants in the form of salary recovery.
  - Please view the website for more details: https://lsresearch.ucdavis.edu/ps/research-policies
  - Each faculty member who chooses to do this will need to notify the department analyst so he/she can work with the DSS payroll to enter this into the payroll system. 
  - The analyst will verify funding for this prior to working with DSS for payroll entry.
  
  **The maximum percentage of academic salary that can be charged to grants during each year is 50%. The year is from 7/1 to 6/30.

Funding Changes & Expense Allocation Corrections

Please notify the department contracts and grants analyst if there are any account changes that need to be made for an individual's payroll. The analyst will change the funding information within the payroll system.

The department analyst can assist with transferring expenses from one account to another if it is determined during monthly account/ledger review that an expense has posted to the incorrect account. A brief justification will need to be provided to the analyst explaining why the expense needs to be transferred and how it benefits the account that the expense is being transferred to.