Grant recipients routinely make changes to research projects throughout the course of a project period. Certain changes can be made at the recipient’s discretion, but others require the recipient to request and receive NIAID’s prior approval before implementing the change.
The requirements are described in our Prior Approvals for Post Award Grant Actions SOP. Examples of actions that require prior approval include:
- Change in scope, i.e., changes in the methodology, approach, or other aspects of the project objectives.
- Change in key personnel listed on the Notice of Award.
- Addition of a new foreign site, foreign subaward, or foreign collaboration.
Find a complete list in the SOP linked above.
When prior approval is required, the institutional business official must send the request to the grants management specialist, with a copy to the program officer, within 30 days of the planned change. The request may be sent through eRA’s Prior Approval Module or over email, depending on the nature of the request.
Within the eRA Module, a variety of templates exist to facilitate the most common request types: carryover, change of investigator, no-cost extension, big grants, and withdrawal.
We strongly encourage recipients use the Module because the system prompts collection of all necessary information for a given request and then routes the request to appropriate NIAID staff.
There is also an Other Request template. NIH uses this template only for recipients to submit requests for changes to an approved Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Plan. As established by the September 27, 2023 Guide notice, NIAID cannot accept requests for changes to approved DMS plans sent by email.
If you need to submit a prior approval request that is not captured by a standard template available in the Prior Approval Module, then we expect to receive it through email.
Refer to Section 8.1.3 Requests for Prior Approval in the NIH Grants Policy Statement for further instruction, or ask your grants management specialist for assistance.