Grants and Contracts

What defines a Sponsored Program Agreement?

Sponsored program agreements include grants, contracts, sub-awards, and cooperative agreements. A sponsor, or funder, may be a government entity (international, federal, state, or local), a foundation, a private corporation, or a non-profit organization such as another university or independent research institute.

OSPR can help you identify grant sponsors and develop proposals. Our office has numerous resources for preparing your grant application, including a Proposal Development Guide, required internal forms, budgeting tools and guidelines, information on indirect costs, checklists, and more.

Submitting a Grant Application

Full grant applications to government entities must be received in the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research (OSPR), and foundation grant applications must be received in Corporate and Foundation Relations at least ten (10) business days before the sponsor’s published deadline.

As soon as you start planning a grant proposal, please send us a quick message with the “WHO” “WHAT” “WHEN” “WHERE” so we can put it on our calendar and schedule a Pre-Proposal Meeting!

Submit an Early Notification Form

Applications submitted to OSPR for review should include (at a minimum)*:

The Proposal Summary & Approval Form with all necessary signatures
A Financial Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form from each Clark person written into the grant
A final (or close to final) project narrative
A line item detailed budget (spreadsheet)
A detailed budget justification/narrative
Proposal-specific and ancillary documents required by sponsor
Draft of any required letter of support that must be signed by the Director of OSPR, Dean of Research, Provost, or President.

* Use the Pre-award Proposal Guidelines to help guide your proposal development.

Our Services

Helping Identify Potential Sponsors

OSPR provides faculty with individual notices of funding opportunities, conducts individualized funding searches using various databases, and trains faculty, staff, and graduate students to use grant databases for funding searches. OSPR also works closely with Corporate and Foundation Relations to identify support from private sources for sponsored programs.

All Clark community members can also use Pivot-RP to search for funding opportunities.

Helping Develop Proposals

OSPR works with faculty, staff, and students to prepare proposals for sponsored projects. This can involve serving as a liaison to sponsors for insight on funding opportunities, providing strategic advice on preparing proposals, assisting in building a budget, facilitating the creation of teams of participants for collaborative projects, writing and editorial assistance for large institutional grants, and light editing for individual submissions.

Overseeing the Approval Routing Process

OSPR has primary oversight responsibility for the timely review of proposals submitted on behalf of the institution. The review process is designed to ensure that the application conforms to university and sponsor guidelines with respect to academic appropriateness of the project, commitments of faculty and staff time, budgetary provisions, requirements for space and facilities, and special considerations for review as human subjects, animal use, proprietary data, and hazardous materials.

Negotiating and Accepting Awards

OSPR negotiates terms and conditions for all awards and subawards with sponsors to ensure a mutually acceptable award document. The office is also primarily responsible for negotiating subawards to institutions when Clark is the primary recipient of a grant or contract.

Non-Financial Post-Award Administration

The Office has several post-award responsibilities, including approvals for rebudgeting and no-cost extensions, resolving administrative problems that may arise during the course of a project, and overseeing non-financial reporting on sponsored projects. OSPR also works closely with Grant Accounting to ensure that the financial management of awards meets both Clark and sponsor requirements.

Additional Services

In addition to the above services, OSPR:

Organizes campus informational meetings on grant writing, funding opportunities, using electronic grant-related resources, grant management issues, and other topics germane to sponsored program activity at Clark.
Maintains a grants management database that can provide members of the university community with timely information pertaining to sponsored program activity at Clark.

Early Notification Form

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