What is the difference between a grant and a contract?

  • Grants: the investigator has submitted a "grant application" to the funding source asking them to fund his/her research.  The funding source always has a format the investigator has to follow.  Ninety-nine percent of grants funded by the NIH are in the form of a grant, so if they tell you the money is coming from the NIH, you can be almost assured it involves a grant.  The only exception to this is situations where an investigator from another site (ex: the University of Michigan) is the PI on the grant application to the NIH and they then subcontract some of the work to UVA.  In that case the work to be done by UVA personnel is done under a contract.  Other examples of grants are funding sources such as foundations (American Cancer Society), etc.

    Contracts are those in which the investigator does not submit a "grant application" to the funding source to ask for funds.  The most common type is an investigator at UVA doing a multi-center trial for a pharmaceutical company.  If the protocol is a multi-site trial and the sponsor is a pharmaceutical company then you can be 99% assured this is a contract.

    Both grants and contracts are approved by the Grants and Contracts Office.  Most biomedical research is handled through the UVA School of Medicine Office of Grants and Contracts.  Grants and contracts for all other biomedical research are handled through the UVA Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP).