Georgetown Research Services
Georgetown Research Services

Award Review, Negotiation, and Set-up

Research awards made to Georgetown University include grants, contracts, research agreements, and cooperative agreements. JORA is responsible for receipt and negotiation of all research-related agreements to Georgetown University, in consultation with other relevant University offices. JORA is Georgetown University’s Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) and the only office authorized to bind the University to sponsored research agreements.

A sponsored research award is any externally funded grant, contract or cooperative agreement in which the sponsor requires financial reporting, invoicing or auditing. All government awards are considered sponsored research, along with many corporate and foundation awards. JORA must sign any sponsored research award document that requires financial reporting, invoicing or auditing.

JORA receives and reviews award notices, establishes spending accounts in GMS (Georgetown Management System) to bill costs against research awards.  JORA handles all post-award “pre-financial” issues and assists investigators with administrative issues related to setup, maintenance and closeout of sponsored research awards. Day-to-day fiscal management of awards is handled by the grants manager. Financial oversight, reporting and compliance is the responsibility of the Sponsored Projects Financial Operations (SPFO) Department in the Office of Financial Affairs.

All externally funded sponsored research agreements (grants, contracts, cooperative agreements) must be received by JORA and routed to the appropriate Cluster Research Administrator to review the award for compliance with University policies and to set up a GMS (AWD/GR) spending account to manage sponsored research funds.

JORA is the primary contact and conduit to University administration and external sponsors for questions or issues including establishment of sponsored research spending accounts, budgets, pre-award “at-risk” accounts (spending prior to receipt of award notice), re-budgeting, no-cost extensions, or any other administrative or contractual issues that require University compliance review and approval or prior approval from the sponsor. 

Subaward Process

Upon receipt of award, a JORA Pre-Award Grant Administrator will work with investigators and Post-Award Grant Administrators/Grant Managers to establish or modify subawards from GU to other institutions. GU-PASS entries are used to track the establishment and modification of subawards and are initiated by Post-Award Grant Administrators/Grant Managers.

Requirements for a subaward request in GU-PASS:

Usually, the above subawardee documents are collected by GU during the proposal process. Post-Award Grant Administrators/Grant Managers will assist investigators in obtaining the necessary documents from subawardees and will route the information to Pre-Award Grant Administrators in GU-PASS. Pre-Award Grant Administrators then incorporate the required documents into subaward agreements or amendments and negotiate their execution with the subawardee institution.

Subaward Toolkit: