Fiscal Policies for 2015

Happy 2015! Just a quick blog to let you know that last week, NIH announced policies for fiscal operations for fiscal year (FY) 2015, implementing the 2015 Consolidated Appropriations Act signed by President Obama on December 16, 2014. NIH has a budget of $30.31 billion, an increase of approximately $240 million over the FY 2014 final budget allocations of $30.07 billion. We also announced the stipend levels for Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA), and salary limits for individuals receiving their salaries from an NIH grant, cooperative agreement, or contract.

Here are highlights and links to the new guide notices laying out the financial operations for the upcoming year:

• Keeping with the precedent we set up last year, and because each NIH institute and center (IC) has a different budget, ICs are given flexibility to manage funding levels of non-competing continuation awards. Non-competing continuation awards already made for FY2015 that that were funded at reduced levels (usually at the 90% level) may be fully or partially restored as described in NOT-OD-15-001. Non-competing continuation grants (research and non-research) likely will be made within the range between the commitment level indicated on the Notice of Award and three percent below that level. Your grants management official will be working with your institution’s grants officials on the final budget levels when issuing or reissuing these awards.

• The support of new investigators is still one of NIH’s top priorities, and will continue to provide targeted support for these individuals. NIH will aim for a new investigator success rate on new (type 1) R01 equivalent grants comparable to that of established investigators.

• Consistent with the 2015 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act and recommendations of the Advisory Committee to the Director regarding the biomedical research workforce, NIH will increase Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA) stipends by two percent on average. See NIH Guide notice NOT-OD-15-048 for the full range of stipend adjustments for these awards.

• Salaries received from an NIH grant continue to be restricted to no more than Executive Level II of the Federal Executive Pay scale, currently set at $181,500, increasing to $183,300 effective January 11, 2015. Information on how this is implemented for NIH grantees is published in the NIH Guide (NOT-OD-15-049).

Be sure to bookmark the NIH extramural financial operations page, where we will update links to the 2015 funding strategies for individual NIH ICs as they become available. Additional information on legislative mandates will be published in the NIH Guide in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned!