Post Award Amendment Applications

Brief guidance on how to initiate post award amendment applications and access in-progress post award amendment applications from inside the eRA system.

What are Post Award Amendments?

Post award amendments are modifications to your grant that require an application submission and federal approval given in the form of a revised Notice of Award (NoA). Post award amendment types available in eRA Commons include:

• Budget Revision
• Carryover Request
• Change in Scope
• Key Personnel Changes
• Merger, Transfer, etc.
  • and Successor in Interest
• No-Cost Extension
• Organization Change
  • Change of organization information. For changes of the organization itself, use Merger, Transfer, etc.

Please note that a non-competing continuation is not a post award amendment. For more information see: 

• Continuations
• Post Award Amendments

Initiating a new Post Award Amendment application

Note: You must be the Project Director (PD) of the grant or be a Signing Official (SO) with the grantee organization to initiate Post Award Amendments for a grant.

1. Log in to eRA Commons with your username and password
2. Access the SAMHSA section located at the bottom of the eRA Commons homepage, select Amendments, then click Go to navigate to the Non-Research Manage Post Award Amendments tab
3. Project Directors will see a pre-populated list with a row for each grant that the PD/PI is assigned. Signing Officials can set search criteria to find a specific grant, or merely select “Search” to produce a hitlist that contains every active grant at the SO’s organization.
   • The default search results will only include active grants unless the “Include Expired Segments” checkbox is checked. When that checkbox is selected, grants with expired project periods will be also be displayed in the search results.
4. After you have located the grant, click the three-dot ellipses (…) to view a menu of possible post award amendment types
5. Click on the desired post award amendment type, which will open an application in ASSIST, and begin the post award amendment application
   • Keep track of the Application Identifier on the Summary tab to access your incomplete application at a later time
   • When you have completed the required forms and are ready to submit the application, you will need to complete the submission process described below.

Adding and Removing Post Award Amendment application forms

You may wish to add additional forms to applications before submitting them. To do this, follow the steps below:

1. From the Application Information page, click the Add Optional Form action button on the left
2. Select your desired form from the dropdown
3. Click Submit to add the form

To remove a form, open the form to begin editing it and use the Remove Form button.

Note: Be careful to only use the Remove Form action with optional forms you have added to avoid removing a required form. Your Amendment will not be processed without all the required forms.

Accessing an In-Progress Post Award Amendment application to Edit or View

You can access and edit in-progress (prior to submission or view submitted) post award amendment applications in ASSIST using the steps below:

1. Access eRA Commons
2. Click on the ASSIST navigation icon
3. On the ASSIST homepage, click Search Applications
4. Enter search criteria and click Search
   • If you have the Application Identifier, search using that. It will bring up only one result since it is unique for each application.

Submitting Post Award Amendment applications

To submit an application, you will need to be a Signing Official (SO) and will need to be able to enter Grants.gov Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) credentials by having that role yourself, having the AOR enter their credentials, or by obtaining the credentials from the AOR and entering them.

Once you submit a post award amendment application, you will not be able to un-submit it, revise it, or copy it in ASSIST.

To submit an application, follow the steps below:

1. Access the application you are ready to submit
2. Click Update Submission Status in the Actions list on the left
3. Select Ready for Submission in the status dropdown
4. Either enter a comment and click Add Comment or click Continue without adding a comment.
   • These are comments for your organization’s reference and are not sent to SAMHSA.
5. Click the Submit Application button
6. Click Submit to confirm you would like to submit your post award application
7. Enter your Grants.gov Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) credentials
   • Contact Grants.gov Help Desk for further guidance on Grants.gov AOR credentials; or email support@grants.gov
8. Click Enter
   • Note: If you experience issues with your Grants.gov Password see Grants.gov Password Reset Instructions

Post Submission Steps

After your Post Award Amendment is submitted, the Project Director and Business Official, as well as the SAMHSA GPO and GMS, will be notified by email. The email will include the Grant Number, Project Director name, the Amendment Type, and other relevant information.

Note: You may receive an email notification if additional materials are requested from you. The subject line will be “SAMHSA Request for Additional Materials (RAM) for” followed by the grant number.

See the RAM guidance.

You can continue to monitor the status of your application by accessing the Post Award Amendments View page. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Log in to eRA Commons with your username and password
2. Access the SAMHSA only section, select Amendments, then click Go to navigate to the Non-Research Manage Post Award Amendments tab
3. Project Directors will see a pre-populated list with a row for each grant that the PD/PI is assigned. Signing Officials can set search criteria to find a specific grant, or merely select “Search” to produce a hitlist that contains every active grant at the SO’s organization.
   • The default search results will only include active grants unless the “Include Expired Segments” checkbox is checked. When that checkbox is selected, grants with expired project periods will be also be displayed in the search results.
4. After you have located the grant, click the three-dot ellipses (…), then click View Amendments
5. You will be able to view all submitted amendment applications as well as the amendment status of each amendment application.

Amendment Statuses:

• Submitted: The application has been submitted and successfully received by SAMHSA.
• In Review: SAMHSA staff have begun to review the application.
• Disapproved: The amendment application has been disapproved.
• Awarded: The amendment application has been approved and a new notice of award has been issued.