Change of Institution Overview

The eRA Commons Change of Institution process lets the extramural grantee institution submit an electronic version of a relinquishing statement to the Grants Management community for processing and allows the other grantee institution that is proposed to take over the relinquished grant to access the submitted relinquishing statement.

The institution holding the grant must complete a relinquishing statement through eRA Commons that states it is giving up the grant and identify the receiving institution. The receiving institution must submit an application via Grants.gov using the Parent Funding Opportunity Announcement listed at https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm.

NOTE: This functionality only applies to NIH grants.

Features

The Commons system has the following features to accommodate a Change of Institution:

• Create, view, update, save, submit, and route the relinquishing statement via the Commons Status screen
• Create relinquishing statement in PDF format upon submitting the relinquishing statement to the agency
• Event generated and time sensitive eMail Notifications to appropriate users

Users

The following users are involved in the Change of Institution process.

1. Signing official (SO)
   1. The original institution’s SO can perform the following relinquishing statement functions: Start a new one, View, Edit, Save, Route, Cancel, Delete and Submit relinquishing statement to the awarding agency. Optionally, the SO can route the relinquishing statement to the principal investigator (PI), who can review the statement, change the institution and email address, and then route back to an SO.
   2. The receiving institution’s SO can perform the following functions: View relinquishing statement
2. Program director/principal investigator (PD/PI)
   1. The original institution’s PD/PI can perform the following relinquishing statement functions: View, Edit, Save, Cancel changes, and Route the relinquishing statement to the SO for submitting to the awarding agency.
3. Grants management official (GMO) or grants management specialist (GMS)
   1. The GMO or GMS can perform the following relinquishing statement functions: View, Receive, and Return the relinquishing statement.

Business Rules

Eligible Grants

All awarded and active grants withing their budget period are eligible to be relinquished except for the ones with the following statuses:

• 02 – Withdrawn
• 21 – Ineligible organization - application withdrawn
• 30 – Withdrawn by Institute/Center (IC)
• 34 – Administratively withdrawn by IC prior to review or council

Subprojects, Institutional Allowances, and Supplements are excluded from being eligible.

Relinquishing statements can be submitted for any activity code.

Access to Relinquishing Statements

At the current award-holding institution, any SO can start or submit the relinquishing statement to the agency via the Status module.

At the prospective institution, SOs can only access a view-only relinquishing statement form via the Status module.

The PD/PI for the award can review and edit parts of the relinquishing statement only if the SO routes the relinquishing statement to the PD/PI. Specifically, the PI can edit the receiving institution and the contact email at the receiving institution, and the PI can route the relinquishing statement back to the SO.

The relinquishing statement can be routed back and forth between the SO and the PD/PI for an unlimited number of times.

Validation

PD/PI routing is not required. The SO can submit the relinquishing statement without routing it to the PD/PI.

Relinquishing statements submitted for pre-award are not validated for the costs relinquished. They can be zero or the original application’s requested funds amounts.

Other Rules

The system allows multiple relinquishing statement submissions. The SO is able to submit a new relinquishing statement only if no relinquishing statement has been submitted or if the existing relinquishing statements have been submitted and are now in Accepted for Consideration status.

The relinquishing statement can be deleted by the SO from the relinquishing institution if it is in the SO Work In Progress status and has never been submitted to the awarding agency.

All submitted and accepted versions of the relinquishing statements are visible to the receiving institution.

Grant applications for the new institution should be submitted within thirty days after the relinquishing statement is submitted from the former institution.

The relinquishing statement should be submitted within thirty days of the grant application for the new institution.