Tips: June 7, 2019

SPARCS Tips

Following are this week's tips which will help navigate these changes - 

• Grant or Subaward-Subcontract: Old habits are hard to break! When the majority of the proposals we put through SPARCS are grants, it sometimes becomes a habit to just select Grant for all proposals. Please remember that when you are submitting a funding proposal that is coming from a pass-through the Instrument Type question on the General Proposal Information smartform should be marked as Subaward-Subcontract.

• Update Project Summary-Abstract: If your Department or Specialist is reviewing your funding proposal and they ask you to update the Project Summary-Abstract attachment the BEST way to accomplish this is to utilize the Update Research Plan The reason this is the best way is because it will replace the existing document rather than adding an additional attachment (making it difficult to identify the correct file).
  • States Available: Draft, Department Review, Specialist Review, Final SPO Review

• Opportunity ID: There are some times when opportunity IDs do not appear to be in SPARCS and folks end up using the Help Desk section to enter the information manually. Many times the opportunity does not exist but there are also times when it’s just an issue of how the ID is entered. Below are examples of how these opportunities should be entered into SPARCS.
  • NIH: Use dashes (-) the same way the NIH uses them, a few examples: PA-19-055, PAR-19-253, RFA-AT-19-011,
  • NSF: Do NOT use “NSF” in the ID number. Use dashes (-) in between each section of the ID. A few examples of this are: NSF 19-561 should be entered as 19-561, NSF PD 98-1320 should be entered as PD-98-1320.   
  • OTHER: For other federal agencies such as DARPA, ARO, AFRL, etc… typically use the formatting provided in the Opportunity (BAA) instructions. Use dashes (-) where indicated and avoid using additional prefixes such as BAA unless specifically stated: HR001119S0053, W911NF-17-S-0002, BAA-AFRL-RQKHC-2016-0009.