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Hardship Authorization Requests

Under the hardship process, a sponsored project/grant can be established prior to actual receipt of the final award document. This permits work to begin in situations where:

  1. There is a delay in the award process.
  2. There is reasonable certainty that the award will be forthcoming.
  3. Necessary expenditures will be allowable under the anticipated award terms (typically the effective date).
    [Have an existing P/G covered by FDP? See note below.]

A Hardship Authorization Request must be submitted to DRDA. This is initiated in the eResearch Proposal Management system.

The procedure:

  1. In eRPM, go to the project PAF.
  2. Click on the Hardship tab.
  3. Complete the questions.

The information required is:

  1. Brief description of the need.
  2. Evidence of why you think an award is forthcoming.
  3. Period of hardship (start and end dates) -- typically not longer than three months.
  4. Itemized budget (by general category), including indirect costs, for the time period. All items must be otherwise allowable in accordance with the anticipated terms of the award. Please be specific if funds are requested for equipment or subcontractors.

Signatures required:

  1. Project Director (or designate)
  2. Department/Unit
    (to acknowledge there may be a risk that the formal award might not be issued to cover the expenses incurred).
  3. DRDA Project Representative

Upon receipt of the hardship request, Principal Investigators must confirm that the local compliance requirements are met before DRDA will establish the project/grant and short code. Specially, before DRDA will process the request:

Contact the appropriate DRDA Project Representative (Contact Information) as you initiate this process.

Although DRDA will continue to do their best to ensure that hardship accounts are set-up judiciously, it is ultimately the signing department that is financially responsible if for some reason the award is not received or received later than ninety days.

Special note for some FDP awards
Some awards covered by the terms of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) permit expenditures prior to the actual effective date of the award, referred to as "preaward costs." To request approval of such expenditures for an existing P/G, please use the FDP Post Award Change Approval Request Form (12K MicroSoft Word v6 | name: fdp.doc)

Last reviewed: March 5, 2010

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