FAQs

The Office of Grants and Contracts verifies that sponsored project proposals adhere to sponsor and institutional guidelines. This ensures that the award process goes smoothly and is not delayed or prohibited by an unforeseen requirement or policy. PASS serves as the first check that your proposal meets these requirements and that the correct information is provided to the Office of Grants and Contracts for review.

The National Institutes of Health provides detailed information on how to find funding opportunities, what is needed to apply, and how to manage awards. A good place to start is the NIH grants page, but with so many federal policies flowing into NIH requirements, it helps to have a personal guide to the process. PASS monitors these requirements and navigates the process for its PIs.

Most budgets for biomedical research at the University of Colorado Denver include personnel, supplies, animal research and human subjects or clinical trial costs. What many investigators don’t fully consider is the impact that indirect costs can have on their budget. PASS is instrumental in the budget development process for its PIs and ensures that proposal budgets are consistent with sponsor and institutional guidelines.

Commonly requested documents like biosketches, budget justifications and other support pages can vary from one sponsor to another. The PASS group assists PIs with the development of these common, non-science application components during the proposal development process.

Here are some templates to use for the most common proposal components:

NIH Biosketch

NIH Other Support

Budget Justification (Word download)

Collaborative proposals and the resulting studies are critical to scientific advancement, and sponsors recognize that collaboration leads to some of the biggest breakthroughs. In order to get your collaborative project off to the right start, the PASS group works with administrators at collaborating institutions to make sure all the required subaward documentation is in place before the internal University of Colorado Denver routing and final submission to the sponsor.

The University of Colorado Denver seeks to recover the appropriate indirect costs, or facilities and administrative (F&A) costs, on all sponsored programs regardless of the source. However, several factors determine the correct indirect cost rate and how to include it in your budget. Because indirect costs can have a significant impact on research project budgets, we make it a priority to work with our PIs early in the process to develop a budget that maximizes their work within the budget restrictions of the university and the sponsor