Proposals with subrecipients

A subaward is an agreement with a third-party organization (subrecipient) collaboratively performing a portion of a UMB project or program.

Usually the proposed subaward is included as part of UMB's proposal to the sponsor, and includes information about the subrecipient's planned scope of work and budget.

First, determine whether UMB would pay the third-party organization as a subrecipient or as a vendor.  If the organization and scope of work fit the profile of a subrecipient, then follow the instructions below to include the subrecipient in UMB's proposal.

As a general rule, collaborators from other USM institutions will be paid through a subaward or other agreement made between the institutions. Follow the instructions below for proposals with collaborators from other USM institutions.

Required documents from each proposed subrecipient:

Letter of Support (LOS):  Letter must be signed by an authorized official for the subrecipient. Subrecipient Letter of Support Sample

Template Letter of Support - Foreign Subrecipient - NIH application:  Use for foreign collaborators under NIH grant or cooperative agreement applications.  Letter must be signed by an authorized official for the subrecipient.

If Subrecipient is the University of College Park, the only Letter of Support needed is the MPowering letter. MPowering Collaborating Letter

  • SPA will accept the other institution's letter or form provided that the document contains all of the information found in the UMB LOS Template including the authorized signature.
  • Getting pushback from the other institution on your request for the LOS? When appropriate, respond with this explanation to the proposed subrecipient.

Facilities and Administrative Costs (F&A) Rate Agreement:  A copy of the subrecipient’s federally negotiated rate agreement (NICRA), if they have negotiated an agreement with their cognizant agency.

  • A URL is acceptable in lieu of the document. 
  • Upload the document in Kuali Research under Internal Attachments
  • Some universities have provided their NICRA in the FDP Clearinghouse. Search, then click on the organization (blue link) for details. Scroll down to "Rate Agreements".

Statement of Work (SOW): include a clear description of the work to be performed, proposed timelines, and deliverables/reports. Statement of Work template

Biosketches and other documents, as required by the sponsor

Budget and Budget Justification, including the subrecipient’s direct and facilities and administrative (F&A) costs, calculated using the subrecipient’s approved F&A and fringe benefit rates. 

  • Subaward budget form
    • For S2S proposals: From the Forms tab of the S2S Opportunity Search section of your proposal, click on the Subaward Budget link in the left column to download the form. Then, extract the budget form from the downloaded document. Contact the SPA proposal team for assistance. 
    • Non-S2S Proposals: For proposals that are not being submitted system-to-system (S2S), use this form:  Subaward Budget Form for Kuali Research
  • Provide the form to the subrecipient for completion.
  • AFTER all UMB costs for all years have been generated (auto-calculated), upload the Subaward Budget form to the Subaward section of the Budget Module in your proposal. How to attach a subaward budget in Kuali Research

Avoid submission errors related to subaward budgets

Provide these instructions to your subrecipient, and review the completed Subaward Budget for these issues:

  • The R&R Budget Forms do not allow for "empty" budget periods. Subrecipients should complete all budget periods in the R&R Subaward Budget Form for their subaward budgets, aligning the budget period numbers, start dates, and end dates with the budget periods of the prime grant.
  • Project dates must be correct on every budget year
  • Subrecipient budget must have the same number of budget periods as the parent proposal.
  • For inactive budget periods, provide a single entry including the following:
    Subaward PI First and Last names
    Project Role
    Calendar Months = .01 (smallest amount effort allowed in the field)
    Requested Salary = $0
    Fringe Benefits = $0
  • Subrecipient' Budget Justification must include an explanation of the inactive budget periods
  • Subrecipient's Budget Justification must be a PDF file and the file name must be unique for this proposal
  • NIH instructions reference

Other information

Kuali Research — Subrecipients are entered on the Other Organizations tab in the Organizations/Locations section of the proposal. Submit an Address Request if the subrecipient does not appear in the Kuali Research Organization Look-up.

UEI requirement for subrecipients — Subrecipients can register in SAM.gov and will be assigned their Unique Entity ID. Applicants must enter the UEI (SAM) in the data entry field labeled “UEI” on the SF-424 form.