Financial Services and the Office of Grants and Contracts

Benefit Composite Rates for BUDGETING Sponsored Project Proposals

Below are the fringe benefit rate projections to be used for budgeting purposes on sponsored projects proposals. Please use these rates for proposals submitted after today for the CU Denver | Anschutz Medical campuses.  Please use these rates for budgeting purposes on proposals with deadline dates falling on or after February 12, 2020.  Remember, our campuses still charge benefits based on actual costs and not the budgeted rates.  The fringe benefits listed below are treated as direct costs.

Based on feedback from the Colleges and Schools, we have revised our personnel categories to provide more precision on projecting actual benefit costs.

CU Denver Faculty

CU Anschutz Faculty

CU Denver | CU Anschutz

If you have any questions, please contact Ryan Holland at 303-724-0195.

Already included in these rates above are the Actual Fringe benefit rates for FY2020 -- as of 1/1/2020, we had a rate decrease for “termination pay”.  Termination pay was 2.021% as of July 1, 2019 and as of 1/1/2020, it has decreased to 1.190%.

FY2020 Fringe Benefits

Financial Services Sponsored Project Training Program – Spring 2020

Financial Services is pleased to announce that registration for the sponsored projects training courses for spring 2020 is now open in SkillSoft.  The courses are offered at both CU Anschutz and CU Denver and are open to all employees. These courses are particularly recommended for new employees at the University and to employees new to sponsored research.

The courses for spring 2020 are:

• SP 1 – Introduction to Sponsored Projects
• SP 2 – Cost Principles for Sponsored Projects
• SP 3 – Pre-Award Administration for Sponsored Projects
• SP 4 – Post Award Administration for Sponsored Projects
• SP 7 – Essential Communication Skills for Research Administrators
• SP 10 – Clinical Trials
• SP 11 – Contracting for Sponsored Projects
• SP 12 – Introduction to 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance)
• SP 13 – Introduction to the NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIHGPS)
• SP 14 – Advanced Pre-Award
• SP 15 - Advanced Post Award
• SP 16 – Subrecipient Monitoring Policies and Procedures
• SP 17 – Gifts to the University
• UPDATED SP 18 – Compliance Updates
• SP 19 – Overview of Regulatory Compliance
• NEW COURSE SP 20 – Financial Administration Workshop

What’s New in 2020?

• Proposed Revisions to 2 CFR 200 (Uniform Guidance). On January 22, the Office of Management and Budget released proposed revisions to 2 CFR 200. The proposed revisions are discussed in SP 18 – Compliance Updates.
• Two-hour courses. The Advanced Pre-Award course (SP 14) and the Advanced Post Award course are now each two hours.
• Overview of Regulatory Compliance (SP 19). This course is a modified, one-hour version of the previous regulatory compliance courses and products of research (SP 5, SP 8 and SP 9).
• Financial Administration Workshop (SP 20). This course is a hands-on scenario-based course designed to present an overview of financial administration in both the pre-award and post award phases.

Registration, course descriptions and time and date offerings for each course is found on SkillSoft.

If you have questions about how register, you can visit the Skillsoft Help Page.

Under the Resource Tab, there a number of resources and quick reference guides. In particular the Instructor Led Training (ILT) guide covers how to enroll in an ILT course, how to check your enrollment status, and how to withdraw from an ILT course. The Enrolling in Instructor Led Training may be helpful as well. Finally, under the Instructor Led Training tab, there is information about where to find instructor led training (ILT) courses.

Please feel free to reach out to TK Keith or Shane Jernigan if you have questions about the training program.

Effort Reporting  –  Do You Have Questions?

Some frequently asked questions received by OGC are….

• Why do I need to report effort?
• How do I certify?
• How can I see one of my employee’s EPERS?
• What EPERS in my department are outstanding?
• Why am I being asked to recertify?
• How can I certify as a supervisor?

There is a great central resource for the answer to many of these questions and other EPERS questions on the Office of University Controller’s website.  At this site, you can find Step-by-Step guides for certification, both for employees and supervisors.  You can find a link to the EPERS SkillSoft training course and short video summary about EPERS.  There is also a listing of CU Data reports that are available with information about how to run the report, how to read the report and the content.

New Funding Levels from NIH

• FY 2020 Funding Levels – Non-competing continuation awards made in FY 2020 will generally be issued at the commitment level indicated on the Notice of Award.
• Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Services Awards (NRSA) – The NIH will increase NRSA stipends by approximately 2% for predocs and between 4-5% on average for postdocs. The full range of stipend adjustments for FY 2020 will be published soon. Until NIH publishes the notice, proposals should continue to reflect the current stipend levels.
• Next Generation Researchers Initiative Policy – Prioritizing meritorious R01- equivalent applications from early stage investigator (ESI) principal investigators.By providing funding priority for ESIs, NIH intends to encourage funding applications that involve researchers earlier in their career. Additional information can be found in NOT-OD-17-101.
• Salary Limits – Federal FY2020 NIH Salary Cap is set at $197,300 and is effective January 5, 2020. The new salary cap can be applied to all grant proposals submitted on or after January 5, 2020. Current projects may re-budget within the terms and conditions of the notice of award.

To subscribe to the GC-Updates list serve, click here.