An Overview of eRA Partnerships
eRA provides our partners the information systems capabilities and services necessary to support full lifecycle grants administration, while capitalizing on economics of scale and reducing duplicative system development. eRA invites Federal agencies who share similar research missions and/or business processes with NIH to explore the possibility of using eRA's electronic grants systems for their grants administration.
eRA has significant experience in partnering. Not only does it support 24 independent grant-making NIH Institutes and Centers, but it services five other agency partners including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), as well as the federal agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
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Although the entire end-to-end grants management system is available, partners may select only those service components that best suit their electronic research administration needs.
Why Integrate?
Many Federal agencies have developed their own systems to provide grants administration functionality. In fact, as is the case with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), even individual operating divisions (OpDivs) within a single agency had developed and maintained their own distinct systems. The cost of operating and maintaining these individual systems is extremely high. Additionally, the applicant/grantee community must learn to use each separate system.
Although business practices may vary from one grant-making entity to another, there are core functions common to many systems. By taking advantage of system flexibility, multiple entities can leverage the investment in a consolidated system.
The Federal government has adopted a Grants Management Line of Business (GM LoB) model that is consolidating the number of agency “back end” systems (i.e. the systems applicants use to interact with individual agencies after a grant application has been submitted via the federal-wide portal of Grants.gov). The GM LoB model allows a granting organization to choose one of several grant administration systems based on which system best fits the organization’s business needs. These consortia will service all or part of the grant administration needs of agencies that share that business interest. eRA has been named an “approved alternative” system and may be selected in addition to the three main GM LoB consortia leads. In addition, eRA has put in a proposal to become a fully recognized consortia lead itself.
For more information, please visit
Benefits of Partnering with eRA (PDF - 282 KB)
An Overview of eRA Services for Grant Applicants/Grantees
An Overview of eRA Services for NIH and Grantor Agencies
Becoming an eRA Partner: Phases of Integration (PDF - 165 KB)
Contact Us about Partnering
