Regulatory Guidance

Sponsored projects consist of various funding instruments that accomplish different goals and are subject to different federal regulations. Funding instruments include grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements.

  • Grant: A financial assistance mechanism providing money, property, or both to carry out an approved project or activity.
  • Contract: A procurement mechanism obligating the recipient to furnish a product or service defined in detail by the sponsor.
  • Cooperative Agreement: These are also a financial assistance mechanism but are used when the sponsor anticipates maintaining substantial involvement with the recipient during performance of the project or activity.

Sponsored projects are subject to agency terms and conditions, award requirements, institutional policies and the following regulations:

Funding Instrument Federal Awards State Awards
Administrative Rules Cost Principles Audits Administrative, Cost Principles & Audits
Grants & Cooperative Agreements (Including Fellowships) Uniform Guidance Subpart C (pre-award) & D (post-award) Uniform Guidance Subpart E Uniform Guidance Subpart F Texas Uniform Grant Management Standards (UGMS)
Contracts Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) Uniform Guidance Subpart E as incorporated in the FAR Uniform Guidance Subpart F except fixed priced contracts and sub-contracts subject to FAR

Federal Regulations

Federal Demonstration Partnership

Texas Tech University is a member of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP). The FDP is a collaborative organization between certain federal organizations and institutes of higher education to work together to decrease administrative burden. The FDP has organized responses to federal regulation changes, developed uniform templates for member institutions for award documents to promote uniformity, and piloted programs to test effects of burdens among other things.

Federal agencies who participate in the FDP make efforts to uniformly apply federal regulations. For example, federal guidance often requires prior approval for various revisions, purchases, or administrative changes to awards. These federal agencies work together to waive many of these requirements across the board to collectively assist in reducing administrative burden on their agencies and institutions of higher education. For information on the FDP or a listing of participating agencies and institutions, please visit http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/fdp/index.htm.

State Regulations

Institutional Policies

Texas Tech Operating Policies are published online and organized by sections of the University.

  • Research Policies may be found in Section 74.
  • Policies related to award management (Research Accounting) may be found in Section 65.

However, these are not the only policies governing sponsored projects. Additional guidance may be found in, but is not limited to, the following Sections:

  • Section 62 Financial and Accounting;
  • Section 70 Human Resources;
  • Section 72 Purchasing, Contracting, and Payables; and
  • Section 79 Travel.

A full listing of TTU OPs can be found on the Operating Policies and Procedures website.

For additional questions, Research Administrator contacts can be found by college and department in the Accounting Services Find My Research Administrator contact listing.