Office of Research and Project Administration

NIH has provided clarification regarding the amount of funds that may be requested in competitive revisions or administrative supplements. Clarification regarding the use of modular budgets is also provided.

If a project was previously funded under a program or activity code with budget limitations or ceilings, these limitations or ceilings are not applicable to ARRA competitive revision and/or administrative supplement requests. Note that all budget requests must be commensurate with the scope of the programmatic request and will be subject to a cost analysis prior to award.  In addition, budgets submitted in competing revisions will be subject to peer review. Note also that individual NIH ICs may have institute specific guidelines with regard to budget requests.

For Competitive Revision Applications, budget requests equal to or less than $250,000 direct costs per year must use a modular budget component; requests over $250,000 direct costs per year must use the detailed budget component. The budget mechanism used is dependent on the funds requested under the ARRA and is independent of the parent grant budget mechanism. This flexibility to switch from a modular budget to a detailed budget only applies to ARRA competing revision requests and is not a change in NIH’s general practice.

Please see NOT-OD-09-079 (below and at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-09-079.html) for further details.

Please contact your ORPA Research Administrator with any questions or concerns.

Donna Beyea - x5-8037

Anne Corriveau – x3-2137 

Gayle Elledge - x 5-1502

Brenda Kavanaugh - x5-1504

Tammie Martin - x3-3960

Jane Tolbert - x5-4210

Cheryl Williams - x5-1503

ARRA Administrative Supplements and Competitive Revisions: Clarifications on Programmatic Limitations and use of Modular Budgets

Notice Number: NOT-OD-09-079

Key Dates
Release Date: April 3, 2009

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH), (http://www.nih.gov)

In March, 2009, the NIH announced the availability of funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for project expansions via competitive revisions (NOT-OD-09-058) and administrative supplements (NOT-OD-09-056), including administrative supplements providing summer research experiences for students and science educators (NOT-OD-09-060).

This Notice serves to clarify that requests in response to the Notices cited above may be made in excess of programmatic cost limitations or ceilings associated with a program or activity code (e.g., direct costs stipulated for Small Research Grants [R03], Exploratory/Developmental Grants [R21]). 

If a project was previously funded under a program or activity code with budget limitations or ceilings, these limitations or ceilings are not applicable to ARRA competitive revision and/or administrative supplement requests. Note: All budget requests must be commensurate with the scope of the programmatic request and will be subject to a cost analysis prior to award.  In addition, budgets submitted in competing revisions will be subject to the peer review.

Concerning modular budgets and competitive revision applications, the modular grant concept applies.  Therefore, for electronic submissions, budget requests for competitive revisions equal to or less than $250,000 direct costs per year must still use a modular budget component; requests over $250,000 direct costs per year must use the detailed budget component.  (For paper PHS 398 applications (e.g., P01), a detailed budget is always required.) Please note the flexibility to switch from a modular to a detailed budget is only available for those Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) where both the detailed budget and modular budget components are part of the application package.  (For FOAs where only the modular budget component is available (e.g., SC1, SC2, SC3) competitive revisions will be submitted using the modular format for no more than $250,000 direct costs per year.) Note that this flexibility to switch from a modular budget to a detailed budget only applies to ARRA competing revision requests and is not a change in our general practice.

Institutions and Project Directors/Principal Investigators should be aware that they will receive a validation warning when submitting a competitive revision through Grants.gov if the parent application was submitted using a modular budget and they are now submitting a detailed budget.  The warning will read:  “The parent grant for this revision uses the modular format; in most cases, this application must be submitted with a modular budget.  If the budget caps permitted by the FOA exceed the modular limit of $250k, the application must be submitted with a detailed budget”.  Please disregard this warning.  It will not affect submission of the application through Grants.gov. 

Inquiries

Questions concerning this Notice should be referred to GrantsInfo@mail.nih.gov.

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Jane Tolbert
Research Administrator
Office of Research & Project Administration
University of Rochester
503 Hylan Building
RC Box 270140
Rochester, NY 14627
Phone: 585-275-4210
Fax: 585-275-9492
Email: jtolbert@orpa.rochester.edu