Variations

About
Over the duration of an Australian Research Council (ARC) or National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grant, various changes in circumstances may require a request for a Variation of the Funding Contract/Agreement. All variations to the funding agreement must be submitted to the ARC/NHMRC for approval via the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR).

Procedure
Researchers must forward variation requests to their College Research Office (CRO), who will complete the Proforma where applicable and forward the request to the OSR.

The CRO prepares variation requests and forwards them to the Post Award contact person in the OSR, who prepares a cover letter to be signed by the Director of the Research Office. The complete variation request is then sent via email to the ARC/NHMRC for their consideration. The CRO and the OSR College Contact are copied into the email correspondence at the time of the request.

The OSR submits all variation requests to the ARC/NHMRC as both funding bodies insist on one contact point for each university, which for the Australian National University is the Research Office.

ARC Proformas
The ARC website provides proformas for the following types of variation requests:

• Request for change of personnel and/or Partner Organisation
• Request for maternity leave
• Request for deferred start, part-time work and/or suspension of fellowship
• Request for relinquishment or termination of funding
• Request to transfer project to or from ANU
• Claim for relocation expenses
• Request to change APAI Component (Extension, Deferral, Suspension)
• Request to change APAI Funding

Variation proformas for all ARC grants can be downloaded from the ARC website.

NHMRC Proformas
NHMRC Project Grants are the only scheme which currently requires a proforma along with the supporting material. Variation proformas for NHMRC Project grants can be downloaded from the NHMRC website.

If an investigator wishes to make a variation request that is not covered by a proforma, a letter should be prepared detailing the request and providing the relevant supporting documentation. It is strongly advisable to check in these cases that the request is not in breach of the funding rules.

Please refer to the OSR procedures for ARC Approvals and Denials on Variation Requests.

Approval / Denial Procedure