Welcome to the Effort Certifier Training Supplement. The goals of this supplement are:

1. To explain the key points of certifying effort on sponsored projects, and
2. To clarify common misunderstandings about requirements in proposing, managing, and certifying effort on sponsored projects.

Each year, the university receives millions of dollars from organizations, including the federal government, that sponsor research and other UW-Madison activities. As the stewards of those funds, it is our obligation to comply with federal and university requirements to certify faculty and staff effort on sponsored projects.

To certify effort accurately, we must understand key principles stipulated by the federal government. A failure to propose, manage, and certify effort correctly could jeopardize the university's federal funding and lead to penalties for the university.

Below are the key points about certifying effort that you will encounter in this course. Please use the navigation arrows at the bottom of each page to access each key point in succession, or you can use the Quick Links menu on the right to navigate through the training.

1. What is effort?
Effort is your work on a project, whether or not the sponsor pays your salary.

2. What is a commitment?
When you write yourself into a grant proposal, you are committing your effort to the sponsor.

3. When does a change in effort require prior approval from the sponsor?
If you reduce your effort (paid or cost shared) on a federal grant by 25%, you must have agency approval.

4. Sponsored vs. non-sponsored activities
Many activities cannot be charged to a federally sponsored project.

5. Whose effort must be certified? Who certifies for whom?
If you work on a sponsored project, you must certify your effort. Effort must be certified by someone with suitable means of verifying that the work was performed.

6. Certifying effort vs. certifying payroll
Certifying effort is not the same as certifying payroll.

7. Effort certification is not an exact science
Certification must reasonably reflect all the effort for all the activities that are covered by your UW compensation.

8. Effort is NOT based on a 40-hour workweek.

Effort is the time you spend on an activity, expressed as a percentage of all the time you spend on your UW job duties. There are two types of effort:

• Cost Shared Effort: work on a sponsored project for which the University, rather than the sponsor, provides salary support.
• Paid Effort: work for which the sponsor provides salary support.

If you work on a sponsored project, you're required to assure the sponsor:

• You devoted effort to the project at a level that corresponds with how you were paid from the project, and
• You have met your commitments of effort to the project, regardless of whether the sponsor provided salary support.

Effort Certification is the University's means of providing this assurance to sponsors. To certify your effort, you review a statement showing:

• The sources from which you were paid, and
• Your cost-shared effort on sponsored projects.

Your task is to make sure that the statement shows a correct distribution of your effort.

A commitment is the amount of effort you propose in a grant proposal or other project application, and that the sponsor accepts.

• Commitments must be specific and quantified (e.g. 30% of your effort to a grant for one year) and are recognized only for PIs, co-PIs, and senior/key personnel.
• When the proposal does not explicitly list key persons, the University defines key personnel for the purpose of effort reporting as the principal investigator/project director and all co-investigators.

No one can ever have commitments to sponsored projects that total more than 100%.

An effort commitment of at least 1% is required of the principal investigator/project director (PI/PD) for every federal and non-federal sponsored project.

Significant change in work activity:

• A 25% (or greater) reduction in the level of committed effort,
• An absence from the project of three months or more, or
• A withdrawal from the project.

For a principal investigator/project director or key person as listed in the Notice of Grant Award (NOGA):

• A significant change in work activity requires prior approval in writing from the sponsor's Grants Officer.
• Any other change in your level of committed effort must be documented and communicated to the sponsor.

For a key person as identified in the proposal who is NOT listed in the NOGA:

• Any change in your level of committed effort must be documented.

For non-key personnel, commitments are not recognized and changes to effort levels need not be documented or communicated to the sponsor.

Your UW effort includes all the professional activities for which you are compensated by the University.

In calculating your effort, you can ignore activities you do on an infrequent, irregular basis when they add up to less than one percent of your total UW effort (referred to as de minimis effort).

A sponsored project can only be charged for activities that directly relate to the work of the project.

• When determining your effort distribution, you must distinguish between activities that are allocable to sponsored projects and those that are not.

Please visit the UW-Madison Guidelines for Effort Reporting, Section 1.3.1, for the following key resources:

• List of activities that may be counted toward your total UW effort
• List of activities that may be allocated to a sponsored project
• List of activities that may not be allocated to a sponsored project

Effort must be certified for all UW faculty, staff, students, and postdoctoral trainees who either:

• Charge part or all of their salary directly to a sponsored project, or
• Expend committed effort on a sponsored project, even though no part of their salary is charged to the project.

Effort must be certified by a responsible person with suitable means of verifying that the work was performed. This is a federal requirement. It is NEVER acceptable to circumvent this rule.

You must certify your own effort if you are:

• A faculty member,
• An academic staff member, or
• A principal investigator on a sponsored project.

Each principle investigator certifies the effort for the graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and classified staff who work on his or her research projects.

You should not automatically certify an amount of effort that equates to your payroll.

• Your effort expended on a project may be greater than the payroll received from that project. In certifying your effort, you should consider your payroll, your commitment(s), and your cost-shared time.

The amount (%) entered in the Certified Effort column on an effort card should match the amount contained in the Computed Effort column to the nearest whole integer (one exception being Salary Cap consideration).

Only in specific circumstances is it acceptable for an individual to certify less than payroll:

• A pending salary cost transfer will reduce payroll to the certified effort amount.
• There may be related sponsored projects for which effort may be certified in the aggregate under a DHHS K-award (otherwise known as "concurrent effort"). Consequently, it may be possible, and acceptable, for an individual to certify effort that is less than the amount they were paid on a K-award project.
• There may be several projects under the same award. The total aggregated certified effort can be applied across all projects under the same award.

Federal regulations allow for an acceptable variance between the actual effort for a sponsored project and the effort as certified on the statement.

At the UW, this variance is defined as five percentage points out of your 100% total UW effort.

• The federal government expects only reasonable estimates of effort and allows for a degree of tolerance in certifying effort.
• Certifying this way is not only permissible but the recommended practice.

If your reasonable estimate is not within five percentage points of the computed effort percentage shown on the statement, you must enter your reasonable estimate of actual effort before certifying.

Your 100% effort equals all the activities for which you are compensated by the University - your total UW effort.

• For example, if you have a quarter-time job, your 100% effort corresponds to everything you do for that job. In this scenario, 0.25 FTE = 100% UW Effort. If you work 80 hours a week, your 100% effort corresponds to all the activities for which the UW compensates you during that time. Here, 80 hours = 100% UW effort.

Your effort coordinator is the first place to go for assistance.

• In ECRT, your effort statement contains a link to your effort coordinator's email address.
• Or, contact a grants administrator in your department or dean's office if you aren't sure who your effort coordinator is.

The Effort Reporting page on the RSP web site contains links to many helpful resources: https://rsp.wisc.edu/effort/

The UW-Madison Guidelines for Effort Reporting describes in detail how to certify effort.

You can also contact RSP by sending an email to effort@rsp.wisc.edu or calling the main phone line at 608-262-3822.