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Effort Updated: May 22, 2025 Created: December 18, 2020 Effort is a financial concept that you apply when writing a proposal and during award management. The Research Policy Handbook (RPH) and The Administrative Guide (AGM) provide extensive detailed guidance on this topic.  Effort refers to the percentage of a person’s Stanford FTE (Full-Time Equivalence) allocated to a specific activity or project.  For faculty this includes teaching, research activities, and University citizenship and can never exceed 100%. Related Topics Faculty …

Guarantee PTA Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 18, 2020 A guarantee PTA is an a non sponsored PTA with sufficient funding whose fund purpose will allow research expenses to be charged in the event that an award does not materialize A guarantee PTA is used when requesting either an Early PTA for spending in advance of a fully executed award or an Extended PTA for spending in advance of a sponsor approved extension to an …

Indirect Costs (IDC) Updated: May 22, 2025 Created: December 19, 2020 Also known as Facilities & Administrative (F&A) costs. F&A costs are related to expenses incurred in conducting or supporting research, or other externally funded activities, but not directly attributable to a specific project. Federal agencies use different terms to describe these costs. The terms F&A costs and IDC (Indirect Costs) refer to the same thing. F&A rates are established in accordance with federal policy. They are negotiated between Stanford and ONR (Office of Naval Research), the cognizant federal agency …

Notice of Award (NOA) Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 19, 2020 The SeRA NOA is an email to the PI and PTA Manager generated by the SeRA system which indicates that a sponsored project award has been fully set up in Oracle financials and contains the Oracle PTA account number. …

Proposal Development Routing Form (PDRF) Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 19, 2020 The PDRF ( Proposal Development Routing Form ) is an electronic form that is accessed through the SeRA system. PIs and department administrators are required to use the PDRF to document, route and track a proposal for institutional …

Preaward Spending Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 19, 2020 It is possible to spend before the anticipated award start date if the sponsor authorizes it in writing. Most federal sponsors allow preaward spending for  grants  90 calendar days prior to the anticipated award start date. …

Solicitation Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 21, 2020 A Solicitation is a publicly available document by which a federal agency, corporation, foundation or other nonprofit agency make known its intentions to award discretionary grants, cooperative agreements, or contracts, usually as a result of competition for funds. The solicitation is the roadmap for putting together the proposal. At Stanford, a Solicitation is typically called a Program Announcement (PA). Each funding agency may use a different term for a solicitation. Some common terms: PA (Program Announcement), Funding …

Sponsored Award Notification Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 21, 2020 A sponsored award notification is a communication (formal or informal) from an external sponsor to the University or to a PI (Principal Investigator) that their proposal has been selected to be awarded.  They typically include the terms and conditions of the award either in the text of the notification and/or by link. Once sponsor award documents are received by one one of Stanford's 3 central research administration offices (the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR), the School of Medicine Research Management Group …

Sponsored Project Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 21, 2020 A sponsored project is an externally funded activity governed by terms and conditions specified in a written agreement between the sponsor (e.g., a federal agency, a foundation or a corporation) and an entity such as Stanford University. The sponsored agreement (referred to by many sponsors as the award) is the legal instrument that binds the University to perform the Statement of Work under the direction of a PI (principal investigator) and further specifies the level of funding. See RPH 13.1  Gift vs. Sponsored Projects and …

Statement of Work (SOW) Updated: May 9, 2025 Created: December 21, 2020 The Statement of Work (SOW) describes the what, why, how, and when of the research project. It shows how the project relates to the sponsor’s purpose and goals. For the proposal to succeed in peer review, it must win over the assigned reviewers. The application has two audiences: a small number who are familiar with the field, and the majority of reviewers who are probably not familiar with the proposed research techniques or field. All reviewers are important because each reviewer gets one vote. The proposal should be …