Gift Funds and Foreign Sponsors
Funds received for gift accounts
(a.k.a. 26-62xx 0r 26 No Overhead accounts)
Background
Usually when checks or electronic transfers are received by the University
for sponsored research, the Office of Sponsored Projects is already aware
of the project and has set up the award in their system via a Notice of
Award. However, when funds are received as a gift to support research
objectives, OSP is not usually award of the gift and therefore does not
know to set up the award in their system.
Process to follow:
- Department receives a check designated as a gift to support research.
- Department forwards the check to Office of Accounting to deposit.
(If the check is sent to OSP instead, OSP will produce a transmittal
memo and send the check to Accounting)
- Cash person in Contracts & Grants deposits the funds into a holding
account if no project account yet exists for the check to go into. If
an account already exists, the funds are deposited directly into the
account.
- Contracts & Grants accountant creates a Request for NOA (Goldenrod
form) and sends it to OSP, along with:
- Copy of the check
- Copy of any accompanying correspondence
- After OSP verifies that the gift is legitimate (and that no nepotism
issues exist), they generate an NOA and budget the funds.
- Contracts & Grants then processes the NOA as usual and transfers
the funds received into the appropriate account (if not already there).
Funds Received from foreign sponsors
Background
When the Office of Sponsored Projects negotiates an award with a non-US
sponsor, the funds for the award are not made available to the Principal
Investigator until they are actually received by the University. Since the
funds arrive to the Office of Accounting, OSP is often not aware when the
funds have arrived and therefore does not generate a Notice of Award to
fund the project. This can result in a long lag time between when the funds
arrive and when they are actually available to the Principal Investigator
to spend.
Process to follow:
- When an award from a foreign sponsor is set up by OSP, they will produce
a Notice of Award that has a project amount on it, but no funded amount.
- OSP will send a copy of this NOA to the cash person in Contracts &
Grants, asking her to keep an eye out for the funds.
- Funds from a foreign sponsor arrive to the Office of Accounting via
check or electronic funds transfer.
- The cash person in Contracts & Grants forwards a copy of the check
or the EFT information to OSP to let them know that the funds have arrived.
- OSP will generate a Notice of Award to fund the project up to the
amount received from the sponsor.
Funds Received from NSF as a Host Institutional Allowance
Background
The National Science Foundation awards fellowships to students and pays
their salaries directly through their payroll system. However, the institution
that "hosts" the students receives a fixed amount, not subject
to overhead, in consideration of the costs associated with hosting the student.
At present, NSF does not provide much backup information when it transmits
these Host Institutional Allowances; therefore, they are often not recognized
as being what they are.
Process to follow:
- The Office of Sponsored Projects will send copies of all NSF fellowships
awarded to students at the University of Texas at Austin to the Contracts
& Grants cash person.
- The Contracts & Grants cash person will set up a tickler file
to keep an eye out for these incoming payments.
- When the payments arrive, the cash person will let OSP know the institutional
allowances have been received.
Areas for training of Contracts and Grants staff
- When funds are received on a continuing 26-62xx or foreign sponsor
award, the Contracts & Grants accountant will often generate a manual
Notice of Award (goldenrod sheet) to allocate the funds. OSP needs
to be copied on these.
- When OSP generates an NOA after the C&G accountant has already
generated a manual NOA, the accountant needs to be sure that the entries
for the OSP NOA do not duplicate the action already done via the manual
NOA.
- When the C&G accountant authorizes an automatic no cost extension
under the Federal Demonstration Project, a copy of the manual NOA needs
to be forwarded to OSP as well so they can update their files with the
new award expiration date.
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