Subaward Package Preparation

This section is designed to help Principal Investigators, (PIs) and their teams determine whether a proposed partner is a subrecipient or a contractor and provide guidance on the items required from subrecipients at the proposal preparation stage.

Subrecipient or Contractor

At the proposal stage, if PIs and their team are unsure about the classification of the collaborator they seek to engage in a proposed project, they should complete the “Checklist to determine subrecipient or contractor classification” available here.

Upon completion of the form, please contact the Grants Officer assigned to your proposal if there remain doubts. 

This process will ensure that the budget submitted to the sponsor is accurate, and upon being awarded the grant, it will facilitate the execution of the subaward.

Pre-award Submission

If the Principal Investigator will contract a subrecipient to undertake a substantive portion of the programmatic effort, there are a number of documents to obtain from the subrecipient institution. They include:

Subaward Costs

When proposals represent a collaboration of work by more than one institution:

  • Costs of such other institutional collaborations are represented in the budget as a single line item and are generally accompanied by a separate budget (as indicated above).
  • Per CUNY and federal guidance, the total budget of subawardee should include both:
    • Direct costs (include any estimated travel costs to the subawardee); and
    • F&A costs (if the collaborating institution does not have an F&A rate, a 10% de minimis rate should be used instead).
  • A subawardee institutional authorization should be obtained before submission to the collaborating prime institution.
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