Topic: Effort Reporting

Sponsors want to ensure that the actual effort spent on the sponsored program matches the effort committed and funded by the sponsored program.

• By submitting your Electronic Personal Effort Report (ePER), you are certifying that you spent due time and effort working towards the objectives of your sponsored project.

Also, it’s a federally mandated process for any employee paid by a sponsored project and serves as one of the primary auditable documents to support salary expenses on a sponsored program.

Every employee paid by a sponsored project must certify their effort for every semester for which they are being paid directly by the sponsored project.

Effort is not fixed and each report only reflects how your time was spent during the relevant semester.

• Ex: If you worked 60 hrs per week on average and 40 of those hours benefited your sponsored research, then your sponsored effort would be 67%

• Ex: If you worked 30 hrs per week on average and 30 of those hours benefited your sponsored research, then your sponsored effort would be 100%

Because each effort report is only a reflection of how your time was spent during the relevant period when you are directly paid by the sponsor, effort does not need to be tracked for effort-certification purposes during periods when you are not being directly paid by the sponsored project.

Every employee paid by a sponsored project must certify to his or her effort. However, only non-hourly employees are expected to certify effort reports for each period. Hourly employees are not expected to complete effort reports because they certify how their effort was expect on their timesheets each pay period.

Policies allowing faculty members to request differential workloads (i.e. change allocations of time between teaching, research, and service for an AY) vary by college. Please consult with your college’s Dean for college polices. If your college has not yet developed a differential workload policy, please contact Sponsored Projects Accounting for campus-wide/system-wide policies and additional information.

No, any effort reported must reflect the actual effort within that same time-period.

• Ex: Regardless of how much effort you spent on the same project the previous summer or even during the academic year, if you commit to 100% effort on your sponsored program for the full, 3-months during the summer, then 100% of your summer effort specifically needs to be related to that project's objectives. Similarly, if you commit 100% effort on your sponsored program for 2-months during the summer, then 66.67% of your summer effort specifically needs to be related to that project's objectives.

Committing to 100% effort is possible if the other “institutional responsibilities” comprise of insignificant and irregular tasks that fall under the umbrella of de minimus effort. This does not imply that the tasks are not significant to those involved but rather that they do not have significant impact on your overall effort. These sorts of tasks are "so small" that they cannot/should not be accounted for in effort reporting.

• Ex: checking emails, attending meetings, and answering questions from your department chair could all be classified as de minimus. Similarly, falling ill and needing to take a sick day would be an irregular interruption to your pursuit of sponsored activities and would be considered de minimus.

However, de minimus effort does not account for substantial tasks anything activities that would have a quantifiable impact on the level of actual effort spent toward the sponsored program for which 100% effort was committed.

• Ex: If you are fully funded in the summer by a sponsored program, then writing a proposal for a new grant (even if it is related to or building off the research that is funding your 100% effort), teaching a course, and chairing a search committee, all fail to meet the necessary criteria to be classified as de minimus.

Please reach out to your Sponsored Projects Accountant (Melinda Hamilton or Jessi Komrofske) or Gwen Gennaro in OSPRI, immediately.

Please reach out to your Sponsored Projects Accountant (Melinda Hamilton or Jessi Komrofske) in Sponsored Projects Accounting for specific questions or any additional support required to complete your effort report.