Tips for Successful Proposal Submission

Last updated June 2022

In general:

Putting notes in RAMS SPOT is always helpful to reviewers. If your proposal is unusual in any way, adding a note regarding the unique situation helps expedite reviews.

If you need help with a submission prior to delivery to OSP, please email SOMRESADMIN@vcuhealth.org as soon as possible and someone will be able to help you.

Note: the SOM Reviewers are not notified of public comments logged in RAMS-SPOT after SOM has "Requested Changes" on a proposal.  If you have a question about a proposal that has had "Requested Changes" on it, please email the person who did the "Requested Changes" action directly (their name will be listed in the RAMS-SPOT history).

SOM SOPs related to proposal submissions:

SOP 101 Preparing Proposal for Submission

SOP 102 Budget Development

SOP 103 Internal Routing of Proposals

Possible major issues

• Be sure to include all required internal forms, with signatures.  Refer to SOM's Obtaining Review and Signature in the SOM Office of Research Administration guide
  
  • VCUHS Employee Participation Approval Form
    
    • Any individual who is a VCUHS or MCVP employee who will be participating on the project must have an approved VCUHS employee form.
    • Remember to budget these individuals in the general cost grid – not the personnel grid (because they are not VCU employees)
  • F&A Exemption Request Form
    
    • There are situations when waiving F&A costs is necessary. This situation requires pre-approval from the Dean’s office.  Make sure you begin the approval process as early as possible.
  • PI Eligibility Exception Form
    
    • Situations such as hospital residents, non-faculty staff, etc. being PI requires pre-approval by the Dean’s office. Please submit the form for review as soon as possible.
  • Voluntary cost share (other than the minimum 1% PI effort or sponsor-mandated salary caps)
    
    • This requires pre-approval from the Dean's Office. For example, if your PI wants to propose effort (greater than the minimum 1%) but not request salary support from the grant, this situation requires pre-approval by the SOM Dean’s office.  See the policies below:
      • SOM Cost Share Policy Statement
      • SOM Process for Cost Share Exceptions or Advanced Approval (Refer to Process 2 if the Department is proposing to voluntarily cost share)

• Other situations where SOM Dean support is being requested such as additional space that will be needed for budgeted equipment. Contact SOMRA as soon as possible (SOMRESADMIN@vcuhealth.org)
• Missing documents
  • Make sure the minimum documents are included before routing for School approval: budget, budget justification, statement of work or project summary/abstract, CV/biosketches, and facilities and other resources documents (if applicable)
• All investigators flagged as "COI Investigator" in the RAMS-SPOT proposal FP smart form must have a Financial Interest Report (FIR) that has been up

Other items to note, not major but will hold up review

• Salary questions.
  • Especially around salary adjustment times, salary amounts in RAMS-SPOT may be incorrect.  Try to verify Institutional Base Salary and put a comment in RAMS-SPOT indicating you’ve verified the salaries.
  • Follow the current NIH post doc minimum salary and SOM graduate student stipend amount (refer to Proposal Budgeting Tools)
• Budget discrepancies
  • Budget amounts should agree in RAMS-SPOT, the sponsor budget, and any internal spreadsheets uploaded. Things may be off by a few dollars due to rounding but these should all agree for the most part.
  • When you change something in the RAMS-SPOT budget and have to update the SF-424 budget, make sure the total Federal request number is updated on the SF-424 Cover Page. It doesn’t automatically update.
• Unit View Access
  • Whenever including effort for faculty and staff in departments other than the Fiscally Administering Unit (FAU), add those departments to the Unit View Access on the first page of the FP smart form when setting up the FP.
• Internal subaccounts
  • Make sure that the direct cost amount includes both salary and fringe. Other budget items can also be included.
  • Provide a notation for each subaccount regarding who/what is included in the direct cost amount.
• Other
  • When budgeting in RAMS-SPOT, if you have a line item that is going to vary in amount for each budget period, you can put $1 in the unit cost field and then put the actual dollar amount you are requesting for each budget period. This way you can have one RAMS-SPOT line for a budget item that varies considerably from budget period to budget period.  Do not check ‘apply inflation’ in this case.
  • For renewals and resubmissions make sure to include the NIH identifier on the SF-424 cover page. For DoD applications, make sure to put the eBRAP log in number in the Federal identifier field in the SF-424.
  • For Federal applications, make sure to run the validation feature in RAMS-SPOT prior to routing and use the "Hide/Show Errors" function when in the RAMS-SPOT budget or SF-424 forms.
  • For Federal Applications, put the eBRAP user name, NIH Commons user name, or other PI identifier in the "agency credential" field in the SF-424 as per the sponsor guidance.
  • It is very helpful to the School review to have all uploaded documents in RAMS-SPOT converted to PDF prior to uploading.