The federal government and individual sponsors have proprietary systems for the submission of grant proposals and management of awards. UT Austin maintains accounts in hundreds of sponsor systems, and the Office of Sponsored Projects serves as the authorized organizational representative (AOR) for UT researchers.
UT Austin research administration staff and faculty may submit ERA Help Tickets to track and manage Electronic Research Administration (ERA) systems related requests. ERA Help Tickets can be submitted for staff edit access to UTRMS records, view-only access to specific departments or colleges, sponsor system access or request to set up new principal investigators in UTRMS via a status exception. It is best to submit one ticket per person for which review is required.
Research.gov is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) grants management system that provides easy access to research-related information and grants management services in one location. New users register directly with NSF through Research.gov and request roles from within the account.
eRA Commons provides the infrastructure to manage research and non-research grants awarded by NIH. New users must submit an ERA Help Ticket to request the Office of Sponsored Projects to generate an eRA Commons ID.
Grants.gov is the central portal for federal grant opportunities. Many Grants.gov submissions are integrated into UTRMS. If an opportunity published on the Grants.gov site is available in UTRMS, OSP requires the use of the System to System (S2S) functionality via UTRMS SF424 to submit said proposals.
Grants.gov Resources
- The Introduction to Grants video series covers the complete Grants.gov application process.
- Understanding Workspace Roles in Grants.gov
- Applicant FAQs
Accessing Grants.gov
- To request access to become a Workspace Manager, submit an ERA Help Ticket, “Request Access to Sponsor Systems”. Access is typically granted within 24 hours; to ensure access by the deadline date, it is recommended to initiate this access as soon as possible
- Existing users – If your existing account is no longer required, please submit a ticket to deactivate your account.
Submitting Unsupported Grants.gov Proposals
For Grants.gov proposals that are not supported by UTRMS, steps for submission to OSP will vary in the federal forms completion portion of the proposal process. As such, OSP will continue to require a Funding Proposal (FP) for every proposal submission, whether or not submitted S2S. The process to initiate a separate Grants.gov proposal application is as follows:
- Upon creating the Funding Proposal (FP), go to the Submission Information Smart Form to enter the Opportunity details of the federal submission. Find the Funding Opportunity Announcement Smart Form: Federal submissions which are supported for submission by UTRMS S2S will have all mandatory and optional forms marked “yes” as supported.
- For those application packages which contain any unsupported forms necessary for submission, navigate back to Submission Information Smart Form, select “No” to Question #3, Will this application be submitted system-to-system?
- Go to grants.gov and click on “Search Grants” to find your funding opportunity. It is recommended to be logged into grants.gov prior to searching/initiating an opportunity. Please note that a grants.gov account will be needed to initiate an application. See below for additional information.
- Open the funding opportunity to confirm details for submission. From there, click the link labeled “Apply”. Clicking Apply will create a Grants.gov Workspace from which a proposal will be created. For details on how to get started in a Grants.gov Workspace application, please see the UT Quick Start Guide.
- At the same time, complete the UTRMS Funding Proposal for assignment to your Proposal Analyst. Complete the Grants.gov application package and when final, click “Complete and Notify AOR” to move the package forward to your Proposal Analyst.
Do not send your application by email to OSP.