Award Transfers

Transfer awards have a lot of variance in their establishment from initial contact to full setup. COERA is here to assist in making the process go as smooth as possible and help make your transition here successful.

Prime Transfers

A prime award transfer is an award at another institution direct from the sponsor that will need to be moved here to UT Austin direct from the sponsor. These can take quite some time to transfer. Faculty members should expect a long timeline for full transfer of the award, usually between 6 – 8 months. Prime transfers require:

Relinquishing the remaining funds from the prior institution back to the sponsor (this step we are not involved in but affects the timeline for when we can start our first step)
Establishing new proposal materials with the sponsor (this step cannot occur until the first step is done since we can’t establish how much the proposal is going to be for until the old institution has reported on this amount)
Establishing new award documentation with that sponsor
Establishing the spending account here

Each of these steps can take a few months depending on the amount of people involved and work needed to get it setup and approved.

Pass-through Subaward Transfers

Subaward “transfer” awards are those for which the prime award is retained with the previous/pass-through institution and a subaward is being extended to UT Austin for participation. These can usually happen much quicker with a timeline between 2 – 4 months depending on circumstances. Subaward transfer awards don't usually have to navigate the relinquishment of funds and instead allow us to offer our proposal very quickly based on actual cost needs. However, depending on the pass-through institution there can be delays in their decision making or proposal material feedback before we can finalize UT Austin proposal materials. We then await the institution to issue the new subaward agreement and review, sign, co-sign, and route for account setup here, which all take varied amounts of time.

TIMELINE

Below is a generalized timeline for expected steps during an award tranfer. In the cases of sponsor this is either the primary sponsor (NIH, IES, WTG, etc) or pass-through institution (another university or project partner).

Award Transfer Step	Expected Time to Complete	PI Contact	UT Person Taking Action
Prepare transfer documentation (proposal) with COERA (budget, budget justification, scope of work, etc.)	1.5-2 weeks (depending on current COERA workload)	Ana Dala (COERA Awards Specialist)	Ana Dala
If subaward, we offer our proposal to pass-through institution via email for review and await feedback	Variable	Ana Dala	Ana Dala or PI (PI’s choice)
COERA submits to OSP and OSP reviews and approves proposal	1.5-2 weeks	Ana Dala	UT OSP Proposal Analyst
OSP provides LOI, tax letter, etc.	1 day	Ana Dala	UT OSP Proposal Analyst
We finalize our proposal materials and submit to sponsor as approved proposal via email or electronic system	1 day	Ana Dala	Ana Dala
Sponsor approves (at this time we request an email that indicates they intend to issue an award, so that we can establish a credit if necessary and available)	Variable	Ana Dala	Sponsor
Sponsor issues agreement document for review and negotiation, if necessary	Variable	Ana Dala	Sponsor
OSP reviews the agreement – if no negotiation is needed then OSP processes and confirms details with PI	2 weeks	Ana Dala	UT OSP Awards Coordinator
OSP reviews the agreement – if negotiation is required then negotiates terms with sponsor back and forth and then processes and confirms details with PI	Variable	Ana Dala	UT OSP Awards Coordinator
UT (OSP) signs agreement	1 day	Ana Dala	UT OSP Awards Coordinator
Sponsor signs off for full execution	Variable	Ana Dala	Sponsor
UT (OSP) sets up account	1.5-2 weeks (if rush account setup is requested, 2-5 business days)	Chaz Gardinier (COERA Postaward Specialist)	UT OSP Awards Coordinator; UT OSP Accounts Analyst