OSP Tiered Proposal Support
Date: Jan. 9, 2025
To: Deans, Directors, Department Chairs, Administrators, Faculty and Staff
From: Vice President Nomura, Research and Economic Development
MEMO RE: Tiered Proposal Support (TPS)
I am pleased to announce the launch of Tiered Proposal Support (TPS), planned for March 1, 2025. TPS is designed to enhance the efficiency and quality of our sponsored funding proposal submissions. In response to increasing funding competition and the need for thorough reviews to meet increasingly restrictive guidance, TPS categorizes proposals by complexity, factoring sponsor and submission type, with a goal of enhancing quality and compliance. Each tier offers specific support based on the proposal’s complexity, submission history, and the Principal Investigator’s (PI) experience.
See the new TPS website for details on changes, which include modified near-final document deadlines, and the ability to modify narrative-type documents (narrative, abstract, references) up to three business days prior to the submission deadline. The website includes FAQs, including details on what proposal types fall into each category. The TPS process is not a substitute for working with college or unit grant administrators and college/unit level deadlines must be met.
The tiers include:
- Pre-Proposal/Letter of Intent: Compliance-focused; final documents ready four business days prior with narrative-type documents at three-business days
- Essential Review: Simple checks, including budget rate compliance, with final documents required four business days prior to the deadline with narrative-type documents at three-business days.
- Basic Review: Covers basic compliance/eligibility checks, with near-final documents required seven business days before the deadline and final non-narrative documents at four business days (with narrative type documents at three-business days).
- Full Review: In-depth scrutiny for complex submissions, near-final documents required ten business days prior to the deadline with final non-narrative documents required at four business days (with narrative type documents at three-business days).
- New PI Role or Proposal Type: Tailored for new PIs or proposals, collaboration occurs 17 business days ahead with targeted deadlines and a requirement to adhere to the four-business day rule.
- Specialized: For high-profile submissions, with planning 21 business days in advance.
Key Benefits:
- Efficiency Boost: TPS focuses on proposals requiring deep examination.
- Customized Support: Support provided is based on complexity and need.
- Quick Turnaround: Accelerates reviews for letters of intent, pre-proposals, and proposals classified in the ‘essential review’ category.
- Enhanced Quality: Improves quality and competitiveness of complex submissions.
Tiered Proposal Support was crafted from investigator and grant administrator feedback, addressing challenges in sponsored funding submissions while balancing our resources. Failure to meet deadlines associated with the assigned tier may result in non-submission and would require an enhanced waiver process to be initiated and approved in advance of assigned deadlines through a TDX ticket submission.
We value this collaborative effort and invite ongoing feedback to continually improve our support services for research excellence.
Sincerely,
Dr. Chris Nomura
Vice President for Research and Economic Development
FAQs
Tiered Proposal Support is intended to allow proportional allocation of compliance reviews, allowing more review time and more collaboration during reviews, for complicated submissions and limiting review time for less complicated submissions. By allocating time in this way, more complex proposals can become more competitive and ensure compliance, allowing the highest quality submissions.
A new section will be added to the VERAS Proposal form that will walk the user through the Tiered Proposal Support selections. The user will answer a series of questions that will categorize the proposal into the offered level(s) of support. At the end of the series of questions, a level (or levels) will be offered, Users can opt for a higher level of support, when needed and when workload allows, but not a lower level of support than what the proposal characteristics merit. Once selected, the PI can see details on the offered and selected tiered proposal support level and can then move on to the next section of VERAS. The initial email from pre-award team will contain details on the dates required from the selected level of support and that section of VERAS will be populated with deadlines to ensure the proposal team is aware of all associated deadlines for the selected tier.
- TSP Pre-Proposal and Essential Review (.pdf)
- TPS Basic Review (.pdf)
- TPS Full Review (.pdf)
- TPS New PI Role or Sponsor Opportunity (.pdf)
- TPS Specialized Review (.pdf)
How do I alert my Sponsored Programs Administrator that documents are uploaded and ready for review?
When you upload new documents or revise documents in VERAS, please use the correspondence function to send your assigned Sponsored Programs Administrator an email indicating documents are ready for review. If you received an email from VERAS for this proposal, from your SPA, you can also reply all (don’t change the subject line) and alert your assigned SPA that documents are ready for review. This is important, because VERAS does not notify OSP when documents are added or modified – we need you to alert us that a document is ready for review, so that we can respond quickly.
A full eight-hour working day is defined as a business day. Weekends, holidays, university closure days and certain dates during winter-break are not counted as a business day for the purposes of this policy. Example: If a proposal is due at noon, Dec. 9, 2024, the four-business day deadline would be noon Dec. 3, 2024. This counts four hours of Dec. 3, eight hours of Dec. 4-6 and four hours of Dec. 9, to total four eight hour working blocks.
You may submit a waiver request for an essential review. Details on this process and the definition for an essential review are included as additional FAQs.
Yes, for the various tiers the four-business day rule still applies for all final submit-ready documents except abstract and narrative type documents. Abstracts, narratives and references may be modified up to three business days prior to the submission deadline. Note that it is up to the SPA to determine if a document qualifies as an abstract or narrative type document.
Documents in their final submit-ready form are documents that could be submitted to the sponsor as compliant with the requirements of the funding announcement. Additional changes/modifications to these documents should not be needed or allowed, unless during the final review the Sponsored Programs Administrator requires changes.
An abstract or narrative is defined as the equivalent of a proposal narrative or summary. The National Institutes of Health may refer to the project narrative as a Research Plan, which contains Specific Aims, Research Strategy, and potential other sections. The National Science Foundation calls this document the proposal narrative. These document types are the document or document section that describes the plans for and path to the proposal objectives. This would include references needing updated if a narrative type document is changed.
This review was previously called ‘limited review’. It is a review that looks at specific compliance focused criteria only and is offered for a limited subset of proposal types or is offered if a waiver is granted. A single budget review will be performed by OSP, focused on rates compliance (fringe, indirect costs specifically, but other rates may be reviewed if time allows). Ancillary document checks will not be performed, and time will not be allocated for formatting reviews or conformance to funding opportunity (FOA, RFP, etc.) requirements. Limited support will be provided for any compliance related forms or entries and no portal or grants.gov type support should be expected to be provided by OSP.
The SPA will not be able to allocate time to clearing errors or resubmitting, except in exigent circumstances and only as approved by the OSP Director or Delegate.
A waiver process has been designed that will allow the user to enter a TDX ticket and ‘self-score’ their request for a waiver of deadline(s). The ticket is submitted to OSP with the self-score and routed by the TDX OSP delegate to the Chair and Dean level college or unit approvers for review, scoring and a decision. If a Chair-level or Dean-level denies the waiver, the proposal will not move forward. If approved, pre-award team and the VPRED delegate review the ticket and respond with details on the self-score and details on whether the self-score was modified through the final scoring process. A waiver for an ‘essential review’ can be offered if the score merits offering of the waiver and if workload allows the Sponsored Programs Administrator to fit the proposal into their workload (to perform an essential review) without causing harm to other submissions in the queue. If the score is at 50-74 points OSP may seek more information. If the final score does not merit approval or the proposal cannot be fit into the workload, the proposal may not move forward for review and submission.
Score levels:
- 75-100 points: Strong justification for a waiver.
- 50-74 points: Moderate justification; additional information may be required.
- Below 50 points: Limited justification; waiver unlikely without extraordinary circumstances.
No. Each college or unit may have their own internal policy and process for balancing proposal reviews, and college or unit level deadlines are enforced by the college and may be in addition to the OSP level deadlines.