Managing Diversity Supplements

Diversity supplements are administrative supplements sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). They are intended to improve the diversity of the research workforce by recruiting and supporting post-baccalaureate, pre-doctoral students, post-doctorates, and eligible investigators from groups that have been shown to be underrepresented in health-related research. This supplement opportunity is also available to Program Directors(s)/Principal Investigators(s) of research grants who are or become disabled and need additional support to accommodate their disability in order to continue to work on the research project.

All NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) are committed to this supplemental funding under specific activity codes (e.g., R01, U01, P01, etc.). The most recent commitment to this funding was under program announcement PA-21-071 (opens in new window) which runs through May 8, 2023.

Award Administration Guidelines

Diversity supplements must support work within the scope of the original project and can be awarded under a prime agreement or as part of supplemental funding under a subaward. Funding for a diversity supplement may be awarded under a separate Funding Notice indicated by Sx at the end of the Document ID (e.g., 3R01CA123456-02S1) but may also be included in the primary Notice of Award for that grant period.

All diversity supplements must be managed separately and are restricted for the use as defined in the proposal. Check IC specific Notices of Special Interest (NOSI) and/or IC website for specific restrictions on your awarded Diversity Supplement. These restrictions typically include that:

Funds may only be used for the purpose in which the supplement was awarded
Funds may be available for carry over dependent on the carryover authority of the main award
Separate progress reports are required as part of the parent grant progress reporting

Due to the specific requirements of this funding, an additional project must be created to handle all expense and payments attributed to this supplement. Departments should request the additional project using the Sponsored Project Award Setup Change Request and reallocate the budget allotted to the new project once created. Depending on the requirements, separate invoicing and/or reporting may be necessary. Research Services Analysts should work with their assigned CGA team member to ensure that any separate invoicing or reporting requirements are met.

Identifying Diversity Supplements in UCSF Systems

For ease of tracking, UCSF has specific system indicators that identify the proposal and the funding as a diversity supplement.

eProposal

The Proposal Type is marked as a Diversity Supplement when creating the proposal record. The name of the candidate/applicant for the diversity supplement must be provided.

CACTAS

The Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) reviews the Notice of Award to identify the name of the recipient.

Sample Notice of Award showing name of the recipient

OSR indicates the Diversity Supplement Fellow recipient in the Award Set-up Notes which is passed along to CGA via CACTAS when processing the funding under the parent award.