Internal Awards

• Internal awards are:
  • awarded with a specific purpose and duration outlined in a contract or award letter.
  • unique 6-digit funds defaulted to the unit/department org of the primary PI/responsible faculty or staff member for the period of the award.
  • administered by a specific entity.
  • funds that may rollover from year to year if the life of the award crosses fiscal years.
  • funds that can house multiple funding sources. (i.e. Educational and General (E&G), Auxiliary, and Indirect.)
  • budgeted to net zero.
• What internal awards will not have:
  • revenue from external sources.
  • indirect costs.
  • the ability to attach to multiple orgs.
  • central support for spending/reporting/reconciliation.
  • excess funds at the end of the award.

• There is not an external sponsor providing funding for the award.
• The funds will not use the OSP reports (aka "PI reports") for reconciliation / tracking. A Fund Reconciliation report is available for reviewing current activity in the Fund along with the remaining Fund Balance.
• There is no PI field to track these awards, but Awarders are to use the Primary PI net id in the title of the fund title established for the award.
• Start and end dates of the awards are tracked by the Awarders of the fund and communicated to the departments and PI’s via the award letters.
• For multi-year awards, budget authority will be granted based on expected spending each year and will not equate to the full funding authority. Microstrategy reports are available to see the financial activity for the full life of the award, including:
  • Budget History by Fiscal Year
  • Actuals by Month and Year
  • Fund Balance Summary (to see current available remaining balance) .
• Awarders will work with Awardees to gather expected expenditure information annually for awards. The Awarder and Awardees will need to work with their respective budget liaison to establish the appropriate budgets and balances for the awards.
• No subawards will be processed via the OSP mechanism for internal awards. If an outside entity is partnering with the PI on their award, the normal purchasing procedures will be followed to pay for these goods and services. If appropriate, collaborative agreements may be attached to a Purchase Order to document the deliverables and expectations.
• There is no Indirect Cost Recovery generated from these awards.
• Awards do not have to be research related.
• Fund numbers for awards may be reused in separate fiscal years for other awards/PI’s. Note, however, that most MSTR reports only reflect the current name on the fund, so it may be helpful to allow sufficient time between reusing fund numbers to avoid confusion.
• Billing does not occur monthly to fund these awards. Full funding is generally given up front.  (multi-year awards may have funding moved in annually depending on the awarder).

How they work:

• A new fund is set up to track the awarded amount and the spending of those funds over the life of the award.
• The fund is attached to a specific org for the awardee's unit to support clear reporting/tracking (reconciliation) responsibilities, while also providing visibility to the awarding unit regarding the status of award spending.
• Awarders transfer approved funding into the new Fund. Funding may be provided in a lump sum for the life of the award or be provided in installments each fiscal year.
• Awardees record transactions directly to the Fund using regular Mason processes. These can include salary/wage charges, purchase orders, invoice payments, or PCard charges.

• Awarder determines how many new funds they will need to administer the awards. Awarders may create "placeholder" funds in advance to facilitate management of internal awards.  If awards may cross fiscal years, we recommend setting up even and odd year award number series to make it easier to track the funding.
• Awarder’s finance unit must determine the default org to attach these placeholder award funds to and can work with the Controller’s office to determine the correct program code and L5 fund for the award type if not known. New fund numbers will be requested through the fund request workflow if a unit wants to see like awards together and there is no appropriate L5 fund established currently, you will need to work with the Controller’s office to request prior to using the new fund request workflow
• Awarder should collect the following information during the awarding process:
  • Detail budget information from potential awardee at the L3b account level
  • The finance POC that will assist the awardee
  • Unit the awardee is with
  • Org the award will attach to
  • The primary PI of the award. (if co-pi’s exist they will need to determine the primary PI as that pi’s home unit will be responsible for the day-to-day management of the award and where the fund will be attached)
• Unspent funding will return to the original funding source at the end of the award
  • When using multiple sources of funding, E&G funds are the first draw on expense.
• Multi-year reporting facilitates viewing the entire life-cycle of the award:
  • OSP PI reports will no longer be used as internal awards transition out of that office
• Awards will not necessarily be in the rollover fund group.
• Currently your central budget point of contact will need to do the budget and actual moves for you to establish the award balances and budgets.

• Ensure expenses are charge to the correct fund/org
  • If admins outside the primary unit needs access to post, the primary unit needs to work with FAST to grant this posting access.
• Perform monthly reconciliation and sign off.
• Monitor fund balances to ensure over expenditure does not occur.
• Quarterly forecasting.
• Provide Award Administrators with:
  • Org to default award to (if there are co-PI’s a primary PI must be selected).
  • Budget distribution requirements at the account L3B level.
  • Project documentation as required by award.
  • Notice when funds are fully expended if it is before the period end date.

• Provide award letter outlining:
  • award amount
  • duration of the award
  • reporting responsibilities of the PI(s)
• Ensure proper and timely establishment / closeout of awards.
• Monitor awards and ensure expenditures are done by deadlines.
• Collect data as outlined in the award letter and communicate with PI(s) regularly.

• Sample JV showing how budget and actual moves work in tandem to fund and track the awards.
• Fund balance account planned use shows you how to budget for multi-year awards utilizing this new account code.
• Award Budget Set up template can be given to awardees to collect how they plan to utilize an award in a given fiscal year.