Quiz — Chapter 23: Collaborative and Multi-Institutional Proposals
Answer from memory, then check. These test when to build a team, leadership models, the leadership plan, subawards, and the one-voice discipline.
1. Which best captures the threshold concept of this chapter? a) The more prestigious the team, the more fundable the proposal. b) Reviewers fund teams that have clearly already learned to work together. c) Multi-PI proposals are always stronger than single-PI ones. d) The science is all that matters; the collaboration is paperwork.
Answer
(b). A collaborative proposal is judged on whether the collaboration itself is credible — whether the team can actually work together — as much as on the science and the people.
2. What test should every potential collaborator pass before joining a team?
Answer
What specific, necessary capability does this partner contribute that the team otherwise lacks? If you can answer crisply, they belong; if the answer is vague ("prestige," "we've worked together"), they may be dead weight that adds coordination cost without capability.
3. Name the three leadership models and when each fits.
Answer
Single-PI with subawards (one clear leader, partners in supporting roles); multiple-PI (MPI) (genuinely co-led work, no single leader); center/consortium (large multi-component efforts, organized into cores and components). Match the model to the real division of leadership.
4. What is the contact PI in an MPI application, and what is it not?
Answer
The contact PI is the primary point of communication with the funder and handles administrative coordination. It is not "the real PI" or senior partner — the role is administrative and confers no greater scientific authority; the leadership plan defines actual authority.
5. What five things should a leadership and coordination plan address?
Answer
Governance/decision-making (who decides, including when PIs disagree), roles and responsibilities, communication and coordination, conflict resolution, and evidence the team has worked together. Not boilerplate — the core argument the collaboration is real.
6. Why is "the PIs will resolve issues collegially" a weak leadership plan?
Answer
It signals the team hasn't thought about governance. Teams don't always agree; reviewers want a real mechanism — who decides what, how disputes are resolved, how underperformance is handled — not a hope that everyone will get along.
7. How do indirect costs work in a multi-institution budget?
Answer
Each institution applies its own negotiated indirect rate to its own direct costs, so the budget is layered with multiple indirect rates. The prime applies its indirect rate only to a limited, allowable portion of each subaward (per funder rules), not to the partners' full amounts.
8. What documentation does each subaward partner typically need?
Answer
A complete sub-budget (with the partner's own indirect rate), a budget justification, a scope of work, and a letter of commitment / subaward agreement signed by an authorized institutional official (binding the institution, not just the investigator).
9. Why must a multi-author proposal speak with "one voice," and who ensures it?
Answer
A patchwork of different authors' styles signals a disjointed team; a coherent voice signals a coordinated one — and the proposal is the team's first deliverable, evidence of how it will produce everything else. One owner (usually the lead PI or a designated coordinator) integrates all contributions into a single coherent document.
10. Why is the timeline for a multi-institution proposal a special risk?
Answer
It depends on every partner's grants office producing budgets, justifications, scopes, and signed commitments on their internal timelines. Start late and a partner's signature gets stuck in a partner's office past the deadline. Start weeks early, set partner internal deadlines, and assign an owner to coordinate the documents.
11. Why might a stronger-looking team (more famous names, more institutions) make a proposal weaker?
Answer
Reviewers fund working teams, not impressive rosters. Every added partner increases coordination risk and complexity, and a team assembled for names rather than necessary complementary contributions signals the kind of collaboration that fractures. A tight, interdependent team beats a glittering, loosely-connected roster.
12. Why handle the division of credit and responsibility explicitly before submission?
Answer
Because roles, leadership, credit, and budget questions can poison a collaboration before or after funding. Candid pre-submission conversations (recorded in the leadership plan) are far cheaper than post-funding conflict; vagueness left to "sort out later" becomes conflict exactly when real money and recognition are at stake.
13. (Synthesis) Two MPI proposals have identical science and equally distinguished investigators; one is funded, one declined. Give one collaboration-specific reason.
Answer
The leadership/coordination plan plus evidence of a working relationship (credible governance and conflict resolution backed by prior collaboration vs. a vague plan with no evidence), or the coherence of the proposal itself (one integrated voice signaling a coordinated team vs. a patchwork signaling silos). Both reflect the threshold: reviewers fund teams that have clearly already learned to work together.