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Grantsmanship
Contract
Development and Resource Development Helping Extension professionals strengthen their skills in project development, proposal writing, and project management. |
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Grantsmanship
Contract
Development and Resource Development Helping Extension professionals strengthen their skills in project development, proposal writing, and project management. |
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Grants and Contracts FAQs This begins a series of FAQs. After questions/responses appear in the Comunique, they will be indexed on Extension’s Grant Web Page. To ask your own question, visit the grants web page and ask. Answer: A proposal (invited or competitive) is a plan for a project that you submit to a potential funding source. It usually includes a brief project overview, justification, objectives and desired outcomes, and a proposed budget. A grant is what the funding source gives you when they choose to fund your project. (We write proposals; we receive grants.)Grants usually result in some kind of formal legal document - a contract or an agreement - that specifies the terms and expectations of the grant for all parties involved. Although we tend to think a contract is formal and detailed, and an agreement is more casual and general, both are legally binding. When you sign contracts and agreements you are making a promise to do something in exchange for some kind of compensation. Before signing your name to either, make sure you understand what you are promising to do and that there are no hidden surprises buried in the legalese.
Fully executed agreements that involve commitments to deliver Extension programs should have four signatures. Each signature is important.
OSU Senior Vice President for Business & Finance - With assurances provided by these first three signatures, the Department of Legal Affairs reviews the agreement to understand and minimize the university’s liability exposure, and maximize the safety of its employees and property. When Legal Affairs is satisfied, the OSU Senior Vice President for Business and Finance signs, confident that this binding document is fiscally and legally sound, and appropriate for the university.
County and state funds support Extension programming as it is broadly described. Dollars are not tied to a particular person to certain complete specific work. Rather, county and state dollars support the effort to complete specific work regardless of who the person is. Extension has a mission and vision to reach as many people as possible with its programming. We frequently seek funding beyond our traditional sources that will allow us to do that by giving us more resources to hire more teachers and deliver more subject matter programming. Most Extension professionals are paid by a combination of county, state, and federal, or state and federal funds. These are full time jobs with full time work assignments. External project funds are used to support a specific program effort. When Extension professionals expend effort toward an externally supported project (consulting, advising, administrating, teaching, etc. ), other planned work is set aside, or is handled by working longer hours. The other work still needs to be done. When an Extension professional’s time is charged to the project, the cost of doing that work is recovered; money becomes available to pay for the planned work that didn't get done. The professional is not paid twice for the time worked. The professional does not receive more money as a result of being paid from the project funds. The source of the professional’s salary and benefits for the time spent on the project changes to the project funds. This frees up local dollars to be spent on other Extension programming as wages, equipment, supplies (whatever lets you complete planned work load as promised and planned.) When local budgets are submitted to commissioners, (and state level unit budgets when submitted to the Extension Director) funds to support staff salaries and portions of professionals’ salaries are included. Most budgets are not fully funded by from one source. Most counties and units generally need to adjust their budgets to fit the funds they receive. Even if the professional plans to work on this project and it appears in the annual POW salary and benefit costs can be charged to the project. The money saved in the local budget is available to grow new programs and reach more people with more programs. IT IS UNACCEPTABLE TO submit an invoice to one organization for wages for specific hours worked and then submit an invoice for those same hours to someone else. That is considered double-billing. IT IS ALSO UNACCEPTABLE to submit an invoice for wages and benefits that exceeds the actual expenses of the person who did the work. Hours and costs submitted for payment must be those of the person who did the work.
It is unlikely. When commissioners or others ask how you are using local funds, you explain that that it is being used as it has always been used - supporting programming efforts in FCS, Youth Development, Ag and NR, CD, etc. Local programming should be better funded when you recover costs from an externally funded project. What might appear to be an unexpected windfall, are actually the recovered costs your office incurred doing a program another agency wanted done that exceeded what could be done with local funds alone. It is a win-win situation for everyone.  Contact
me to help you get started.
Jacqueline E. LaMuth |
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All educational
programs conducted
by Ohio State University Extension are available to clientele on a
nondiscriminatory
basis without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sexual
orientation,
national origin, gender, age, disability or Vietnam-era veteran status.
Keith L. Smith,
Associate
Vice President for Ag. Admin. and Director, OSU Extension
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