Manage your grant

The Research Team is here to support you if you have questions or if you encounter problems. Contact us at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

The following people make up MDUK’s Research Team

• Dr Kate Adcock, Director of Research and Innovation
• Dr John Copier, Research Manager
• Dr Lorna Simpson, Research Officer
• Dr Charlotte Roy, Research Communications Manager

You should accept an offer of funding within one month of receiving the award letter. If you can’t do that contact the Research Officer at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org

How to accept your grant online

1. Login to your account on Smart Simple and go to Grants and Applications.
2. Offered grants can be found under Approved Applications.
3. Click ‘Open’ to open relevant grant record.
4. Click ‘Accept Grant’ button at bottom of page. You will receive an on-screen confirmation of your grant acceptance

Prior to starting your project you must activate your grant. This is an MDUK process and should not be confused with any internal processes your university may need.

Grant activation tells us when you intend to start the project. Therefore, activation is best done when you are sure of the start date for the project. If your project involves a member of staff salaried through the grant you should ensure you have a named member of staff ready to start on the start date. There may be exceptions to this, for example, if your member of staff is not scheduled to start until part way through the project.

We expect grants to start within 6 months of the award date unless reasons for a later start date have been laid out in the original application. We can be flexible about this but if your project start date is delayed you must contact us at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

Please note that ethical approval (where required) must be in place prior to activating your grant. An exception to this rule is if your ethical approval is not required until part way through the project. If you require several ethical approvals throughout the course of your project we insist that the first (earliest) approval must be in place before you start. If you wish to activate the project and ethical approval is not yet in place, please contact us at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org to discuss this further. We will not fund activity related to set up of ethical approval unless it is by specific, prior agreement.

There are three steps in the activation process

1. Activating your grant online. This process MUST be completed at least 10 working days before the grant is due to start

• login at https://mduk.smartsimpleuk.com and go to Grants and Applications
• Click on the Grant Activation tab in the Approved Applications box. Your Grant Activation Form should appear in Draft status.
• Open the form and follow the on-screen instructions. You can save the form in Draft format to complete it at a later date.
• Once the form is complete, click Submit Form.

2. Sending signed copies of the Terms and Conditions, researcher CV and Grant Activation Form

• To print a PDF of the Grant Activation Form, click the Download button at the bottom of the page (this button will only appear once you have submitted the Grant Activation Form).
• Sign the printed copy of the Grant Activation Form.
• Email signed, scanned copies of the Grant Activation Form, the Terms and Conditions and the researcher CV form(s) to us at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

3. Confirmation

• We will contact you to confirm receipt of the signed documents, at which point we will complete the activation of your grant online.
• You will receive an email confirming that your grant has been activated which will also contain a PDF of the final, completed Grant Activation Form.

You must not proceed with the project until you have received confirmation from us that the grant has been activated. We will not pay for any costs incurred before the activation process is complete.

You must tell us if your project is delayed, if there are changes/delays to the project or if there are changes to your circumstances or the circumstances of any staff salaried through the MDUK grant. Changes in circumstances are not unusual and we can be flexible as long as these changes do not make a substantial difference to the project as awarded. Examples include, but are not limited to

• Periods of staff sickness or parental leave
• Changes to the staff named on the grant
• Changes to the supervisory structure of the project
• Delays due to problems with infrastructure
• Any changes in project methodology or scope. Such changes may require review by our Research Committee if they are considered to significantly alter the nature of the project as outlined in the original application
• Virement between categories of funding. MDUK awards provide funding in the following categories: consumables; salary or stipend; equipment; fees. We may be prepared to vire funds between categories if there is a justifiable reason that does not undermine the future of the project. We will, therefore, ask you to provide a rationale to support virement. We do not vire funds from fees into other categories. We will only vire funds if your Finance Team is up to date with invoicing.

There are two possible outcomes of delays to your project that affect the end date. You may request a no-cost extension (see next section) or it may be necessary to put your grant in abeyance for a period.

You should notify us of changes by emailing the Research Officer at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org

We do not award additional funds to support delays in your project. We will consider no-cost extensions (i.e. extending your project without provision of additional funds). In these circumstances you will be asked to explain the delays and to provide a plan for how the project is to be completed within the current funding. Please complete this form and return it to researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

We are unlikely to grant a no-cost extension unless your university is up to date with invoicing.

We award funds on a yearly basis. So, for grants of more than one year the Principal Investigator will go through the renewal process each year. There are three steps:

1. We will request an annual report. This should be completed on a form provided by us by email approximately 70 days prior to the renewal date. Usually, you will have 21 days to complete the form.
2. The annual report will be reviewed by members of our Research Committee who make recommendations about renewal of the funding. Occasionally the Research Committee request additional details. The Committee’s review is solely concerned with assessing the progress of the project against the milestones in the original application (or any revised milestones agreed with us) and to ensure that the project is within scope. Under the circumstances where problems with the project are identified by the Committee a member of the MDUK research team will talk to you about options. It is extremely unusual that a project stops at this point and in most circumstances we will negotiate a strategy to allow completion of your project.
3. A Renewal Letter (i.e. a new Award Letter) will be provided at least 30 days before the renewal date

To support our efforts to communicate the impact of our research, please let us know:

• If you are about to publish work funded through one of our grants
• If your university press office is planning on disseminating anything about work funded through one of our grants
• If you do any public engagement work or events where MDUK-funded work will be talked about
• Updates on any work that becomes patentable

We are keen to amplify our research and researchers, to help raise awareness and showcase the impact to non-scientists. We may get in touch from time to time with opportunities to support us in this area. If you are actively looking to share more about your research, please get in touch.

Contact us on researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

Principal Investigators are expected to provide a final, end-of-project report no later than two calendar months after the project end date. A form will be provided by email two weeks before the end date.

It is important that Principal Investigators provide accurate information as the information provided is used to report on the progress/success of the project on our website and in communications with Trustees, donors and other interested parties.

If an end-of-project report is not received within the deadline we reserve the right to delay or withhold final payments to your university.

In addition to annual and end-of-project reports we also collect data once a year through Researchfish. See the Researchfish FAQs which address many questions or concerns raised by researchers. The Researchfish submission is not used as a tool to assess projects or researchers. It is a way of assessing our overall portfolio and, as such, we would be grateful if your submissions are honest and accurate. It is important that we get as much out of this process as possible, so we have developed this short guide, focused on the main reporting outcomes, to help you to complete your submission. Each section gives an overview of what we do and do not expect when entering information about outcomes.

Publications

We only need to see publications that pertain directly to the MDUK award you are completing a submission for.

Do not enter publications that do not result directly from the work done on an MDUK-funded grant.

Ensure that you do not enter duplicates of the same publication.

We will accept pre-prints in this section but they should be correctly labelled as such

Further funding

We are delighted to hear that projects funded by MDUK are subsequently picked up by other funders. However, inaccurate reporting in this category will mean that we cannot make a reasonable assessment of our impact

Dissemination to non-academic audiences

We involve non-scientists/non-clinicians in every part of our work from patient advocacy, through our communications and in the assessment of our research applications. We think it is important to explain the added value of the research we fund. Please tell us if our funding helped you to reach other audiences in any way. So, for example if you talked about our research to lay audiences or if our funding helped you to reach patients or other non-scientists

Intellectual property and licencing

Please report on any patents filed no matter what stage they are at. Note, patent applications involving outcomes from MDUK-funded grants should be reported to researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org.

Collaborations and partnerships

We feel strongly that our funding should promote connections between scientists and clinicians working in the field of neuromuscular research and even beyond. As part of our reporting we would like to demonstrate how our funding leads to networking and collaboration, both national and international. Again, please be thoughtful and honest about this as it is important to accurately reflect our impact.

Influence on policy and practice

We are also a campaigning and advocacy organisation with interests in how research is feeding through into policy. If your work has had an influence on standards of clinical care or other areas that could influence policy, we would like to hear about it. We may contact you for further information.

This section is aimed at university post-award and finance teams. Note that all our grants are covered by Terms and Conditions and an Award Letter sent to the Principal Investigator (PI) at the time of the award. A letter for finance teams is issued to the PI. If you have not received that please contact your PI in the first instance.

Any questions regarding awards should be sent to researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org clearly stating the grant reference which can be found on the Award Letter.

All invoices must be submitted through our grant management system (see below) unless indicated otherwise in the Award Letter. At the point of grant activation your PI provides us with the name of a contact within your finance team and a confirmatory email goes to that contact. An account is created with the email address of the finance team representative. That account can be used to submit invoices. If you cannot access your account, or if you need to add other finance team contacts,  please contact us at researchgrants@musculardystrophyuk.org

Terms and Conditions are signed by the PI at the point of grant activation. The following are key points to consider but the Terms and Conditions and the Award letter should be read in full

• Payment for salaries and recurrent expenses will only be made quarterly in arrears against an invoice. Invoices must be submitted to Muscular Dystrophy UK through our grant system, Smart Simple within three calendar months of the end of each quarter.
• Invoices must be accompanied by a breakdown of consumables costs. Please ensure that only eligible costs are included (see our Terms and Conditions and the Award Letter)
• Final claims must be submitted within six months of the end of the grant, but we reserve the right the withhold payment if we haven’t received a satisfactory end of project report
• Information specified on invoices must match the information logged on Smart Simple
• We will not accept invoices that span multiple years of the grant. If a quarter spans two years of the grant please invoice us for each year separately.
• All invoices or financial correspondence must clearly state our reference number as shown on the Award Letter
• Virement between headings (salaries, consumables etc.) is not permitted without prior agreement. Extensions or changes to the grant must be applied for in writing to the Research Officer at least 30 days in advance of need.
• Funds are awarded yearly (see the section on grant renewals above) and transfer of funds between years is only made on request, at least 30 days in advance, and where a specific need can be identified.
• Invoices must be fully transparent and auditable. Do not provide invoices that contain hidden credits. Credits to the account should be provided as credit notes and should be clearly marked with the period and/or the invoice they relate to.
• We reserve the right to query invoices if any of the points above are not adhered to. Invoices are typically challenged because
  • Information on the invoice does not match the information entered on Smart Simple
  • Categories within the award are overspent. See the point on virement above
  • Finance teams do not upload a consumables breakdown or the breakdown is unreadable
  • There is no grant reference on the invoice or other key information is missing
  • Costs on the invoice are ineligible (see our terms and conditions)
  • Costs do not align with the costs in the original grant application
  • Spending on the grant is not consistent with the expected rate of expenditure (e.g. if salaries fluctuate without reason)
  • It appears that the grant will be spent before the end date, leaving no funds for salaries
  • Salary costs are attributed to members of staff who are not known to be salaried through the grant
• If the length of time taken to resolve MDUK’s queries results in an invoice becoming out of date, and in particular if resolution of an invoice pushes payment into the next financial year, we will ask you to provide an updated invoice with a recent date.