FUSE Cycle 8 Guest Investigator Programs Budget Instructions

 

Budgets are due on 30 June 2007

(revised 6 June 2007)

 

 

These budget instructions apply only to FUSE Cycle 8 U.S. Principal Investigators (PI) affiliated with U.S. institutions, and U.S. CoIs on foreign proposals, who received notification of an award from NASA. An official budget must be submitted through NSIPRES in order to issue a grant or contract to your organization.

 

Other FUSE investigators who need to submit or resubmit a budget for a FUSE program should follow the instructions at http://fusegi.pha.jhu.edu/fuse/coibudguide.html.

 

In order to issue a grant for a FUSE Cycle 8 program, a budget should be submitted through the NASA NSPIRES system (http://nspires.nasaprs.com) by an official authorized to legally bind your organization.  This is the same system used to submit the Phase 1 (scientific) proposal in September 2006.  Budgets should be received in the NSPIRES system by June 30, 2007.   A signed paper copy of your NSPIRES cover sheet and budget must also be sent to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (details below).   The budget must not exceed the amount indicated in the award letter from NASA HQ.

 

Funding is generally awarded as a grant for a one-year period following the acquisition of the first data for the observing program. The grant will originate at NASA’s Shared Services Center (NSSC) at NASA’s Stennis Center; only grants will be issued by NSSC.  (PIs at for-profit organizations will continue to receive contracts issued by NASA’s GSFC.)  After your grant is started at GSFC and forwarded to NSSC, it will be possible to determine its status by accessing http://www.nssc.nasa.gov/grantstatus/  .   Other contacts include 877-677-3123 (phone), 1-866-779-6773 (fax),  and  nssc-contactcenter@nasa.gov (email).  Costs should not be incurred on this project prior to authorization by the NSSC Grants Officer. 

 

Following the completion of your research, a Final Report will be due to NASA at an address that will be given in the grant award letter.  This report should describe the progress made during the grant and the most important results of the research effort.  A copy of the Final Report should also be sent to Dr. George Sonneborn, FUSE Project Scientist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 665, Greenbelt, MD 20771, or by email to george.sonneborn@nasa.gov.

 


 

 

Budget Submission Through NSPIRES

 

At the NSPIRES page  ( http://nspires.nasaprs.com ),  login with your userid and password and then click on “Proposals”, and then on “Create Proposal.”

 

Create Proposal - There are two slightly different sets of instructions for submitting FUSE Cycle 8 budgets, depending on certain facts about the budget PI, as described below.

 

1)      If the budget PI and submitting U.S. institution are the same as for the Step 1 proposal, do the following:

 

Select “Prior-phase proposal” and click “Continue

 

Select your FUSE Cycle 8 proposal title and click “Continue.”  The data from the Step 1 proposal Cover Page will be used to populate the Cover Page fields for the Step 2 proposal you are submitting. If asked if you want to transfer your Step 1 proposal document (the Step 1 pdf file), answer “NO” and/or “delete file.”  NSPIRES already has your proposal document as part of the Step 1 record. Answering “yes” to this question would create a duplicate proposal.

 

2)      If the budget PI and/or the U.S. institution submitting the budget is different from that of the Phase 1 proposal, follow these steps to create a new “proposal” in NSPIRES.  This category includes

 

a.       U.S. PIs who may have changed institutions after submitting the Cycle 8 proposal,

b.      the budget PI is an administrative PI at the same institution as the Phase 1 PI, and

c.       U.S. Co-Is of non-U.S. proposals.  In this case, the U.S. Co-I would have received a FUSE Cycle 8 award letter to qualify for such funding.

 

Select “Solicitation” and click “Continue”

 

Select “FUSE GI Cycle 8” (about half way down the list) and click “Continue” at the bottom of the page.  This brings you to the Create Proposal page.

 

To avoid duplicate proposal titles, enter the complete, exact title of the Step 1 FUSE Cycle 8 science proposal for which you are submitting a budget, appending one of the following: “- PI proposal”; “- Admin-PI proposal”; or “- Co-I proposal” as appropriate and then click “Continue”

 

Select the submitting organization (your ‘affiliation’) and click “Continue.”  If your correct organization is not listed, you will have to update your NSPIRES affiliation.

 

Click “Continue” after confirming that the organization displayed is the one to be linked to your proposal.  Finally click “Save” to confirm your proposal creation.

 

 

 

 

Cover Page - The cover page sections can now be edited (click on each individual section, then when the information comes up click on “Edit” for each subsection, then “Save” (subsection) or “OK” (section) when done).   You can check to see if NSPIRES is happy with your entries by clicking on “Check Elements” on the  “View Proposal” page.  The Cover Page sections are:

 

Proposal Summary - Paste in the abstract used for the Step 1 science proposal, if it is not already entered.

 

Business Data - Fill in as appropriate for your organization. Please do not use a start date before August 1, 2007 - if you are submitting a budget for an observing program August 1 should be fine to use as a placeholder start date unless you prefer a later date.  Under Application Information, for Application Proposal Identifier, please use the proposal number in your award letter (e.g. FUSE8- 0023).   If you are the US PI for funding of a non-U.S. PI proposal, list the Step 1 PI as a Co-I, with a description of “Co-I/Science PI.”  For “Other Project Information”, it is important to indicate the FTE level for NASA civil servants if they are to participate (and be paid!).  This does not reduce the size of your grant.

 

Budget -  Provide the budget data in the usual categories (personnel, equipment, travel, other direct costs, indirect costs, etc.).

 

Program Specific Data The only question here is to provide the name and organization of the Step 1 PI, if he/she is different from the Step 2 PI.

 

A few details:

 

1) On direct labor (Senior/Key Personnel, Section A   and   Other Personnel, Section B), if you want to enter money for an individual, you MUST provide both requested salary and fringe, since the system calculates the total based on those numbers.

 

 

2) If anything is entered under Indirect Costs (Section H), the text field for Cognizant Federal Agency must not be left blank  (the word "none" is acceptable, but there must be something in the field).

 

 

3) The “Key Personnel" and “Other Personnel” sections are only used to request funds for individuals at the PI institution.  Any money for team members at other organizations, to be funded through the PI’s organization, should be shown in one of two places in "Other Direct Costs":

 

a)  on row 5, subawards for funds to non-federal organizations

 

and/or

 

b) rows 8-10 for funds to another NASA Center, JPL, or other federal organization.  Then totals in these rows should not be burdened in the Overhead area because they are direct funding by NASA.

 

Important note:  U.S. Co-Is for U.S. proposals should follow the other instructions listed above in order to have a grant issued directly from NASA to the Co-I’s organization.

 

4) Team Members - Co-I’s may be identified, whether or not they receive any funding from NASA.  A non-U.S. PI should be indicated here as Co-I/Science PI.   It is not necessary to submit CV and proposed/pending support, although NSPIRES will fuss about your omitting that information.

 

 

Attachments

 

Only one attachment is required for FUSE Cycle 8 budget submission – a Budget Narrative.  This is submitted as a .pdf file attachment.  It does not need to be terribly detailed, but it should include textual information to support the budget numbers submitted (your institution may require more info):

 

All proposals must include a narrative summary of the responsibilities of the various investigators taking part in the observing program.

 

The following may be provided as appropriate for the budget being submitted:

 

Basis for direct labor costs, including individual levels of effort and rates for the personnel involved.

 

Description of equipment and other costs.  Materials, computer services, hardware and software license and maintenance costs, if any. Items less than $500 may be grouped, but individual items over $500 should be itemized.   Explain the need for items costing more than $5,000.

 

Travel costs - itemize trips. In general, only one trip per team member to a professional society meeting or scientific conference will be supported.

 

Overhead rates and costs.  Briefly explain cost rate(s) and base(s) as approved by the cognizant Federal agency, including the effective period of the rate.

 

Proposed contributions from any cost-sharing plan to offset costs of items 2 - 6 above. If cost sharing is based on specific cost items, identify each item and amount.

 

Please note that total cost of support requested from NASA should not exceed the amount indicated in the FUSE Cycle 8 award letter from NASA Headquarters.

 

No other attachments are required.  NOTE: Do not submit or attach a copy of the science proposal.  NASA already has this from Step 1.

 

Once your submission is ready, it must be “released” to your organization for submission to NASA; the submission cannot be done by the budget PI.  It is prudent to give your organization several days before the deadline to complete the submission.  The authorizing official at your organization will be able to print the Cover Pages and budget justification.

 

A printed and signed version of the complete NSPIRES submission must also be sent to by July 6, 2007:

 

Dr. Michael E. Van Steenberg

FUSE Deputy Project Scientist

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 606

Building 28, Room N124

Greenbelt, MD 20771

 

Grant processing for your proposal cannot begin until the hard copy of the budget is received at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.