Tips on Effort Reporting

1. Effort is your work on a project, whether the funding agency pays your salary or not;
2. When you write yourself into a grant proposal, you are committing your effort to the sponsor;
3. If you reduce your effort, paid or unpaid, on a federal grant by 25%, you must have agency approval;
4. Many activities cannot be charged to a federally sponsored project. For example, the time you spend on writing a proposal;
5. If you work on a sponsored project, you must certify your effort;
6. Certifying effort is not the same as certifying payroll;
7. Certification must reasonably reflect all the effort for all the activities that are covered by your University compensation;
8. Effort is not based on a 40-hour work week. It's not based on hours at all;
9. Effort must be certified by someone with suitable means of verifying that the work was performed;
10. In identifying audit findings, auditors look for indications that certification based on factors other than actual, justifiable.