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Subcontracts and Other Consortium/Contractual Agreements

A subcontract is a formal legal agreement between the UMMC and another organization. This agreement is used when a substantive portion of the programmatic work outlined in a proposal is conducted at another organization. Commonly, the other organization is another education or research institution, but can be any organization outside the university.

Outgoing subcontracts

When UMMC is submitting an application to a sponsor as the prime recipient, and a portion of the programmatic work will be done elsewhere, this is called a Sub-Award Proposal. Planned subcontracts must be included in the proposal to the funding sponsor. The subrecipient organization should provide the following four items as part of the submission to sponsoredprograms@umc.edu. All items must be approved by the authorized office of the subrecipient organization.

• Letter of Intent (LOI) signed by the authorizing official of the subrecipient institution
• Scope of Work (SOW), this should include background info/objectives and work to be performed
• Detailed budget
• Budget justification
• Biosketches for key personnel 
• Subrecipient Questionnaire 
• Collaborating institutions’ negotiated rate agreement 
• Collaborating institutions’ latest W9 
• Collaborating institutions’ 3B contact page 

Costs for all direct and F&A costs of the subrecipient will be included on the Subawards/Consortium/Contractual line item.

For most proposals, F&A costs associated with subrecipients do not count towards any direct cost limitations/caps.

Subcontract, consultant or vendor? Use the table below to determine if your collaboration should be budgeted as subcontract, consultant or vendor agreement.

 

	Subcontractor	Consultant	Vendor
Type of Work	Completes a significant portion of work promised and analyzes results using their institution's time and resources. Services are not provided commercially.	An individual who is generally not using any institutional resources and is acting as a direct agent.	Performs services only (lab tests, sequencing, etc.) that are part of regular business operations and are available to different purchasers/customers.
Personnel	Investigator is identified and commits effort to project.	Person is identified. No effort is committed to project.	Person conducting work is not necessarily identified. No effort is committed to project.
Intellectual Property	Entity has rights to intellectual property created through project.	Individual has rights to IP created through project if negotiated as part of consulting agreement.	No rights to intellectual property.
Publications	Publication of results expected; investigator listed as author/co-author.	No expectation of publication rights, unless negotiated as part of consulting agreement.	No expectation of publication rights.
Budget	Generally includes a budget for salary/fringe, materials and supplies and any travel associated with the project. F&A is charged to allowable direct costs. Budget must be approved by the institution's sponsored programs office.	Generally bills by the hour for time spent and invoices for other expenses. No F&A is charged. Is paid directly.	Generally has a set fee for service ($10 per sample, $150 per hour of processing, etc). No F&A is charged.