FDP Subaward Templates: CR, Fixed & Foreign

When a prime recipient of a federal grant passes part of the substantive scope of work to another organization, the resulting subaward agreement has to carry forward dozens of flow-down terms from the prime award while still reflecting the specific payment structure and jurisdiction of the subrecipient. Rather than each pair of institutions drafting that agreement from scratch, most US research institutions start from one of the standardized subaward templates published by the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP). This guide covers what the FDP template system is, why it exists, and how to choose between its three main variants — Cost Reimbursement, Fixed Amount, and Foreign.

What the FDP subaward template system is

The FDP is a consortium of more than 230 US academic institutions and 10 federal funding agencies that develops consensus-based solutions to reduce research-administration burden (thefdp.org). Its Subaward Templates and Tools resource is a set of PDF-fillable model agreements that a pass-through entity (PTE — the prime recipient of a federal grant or cooperative agreement) can use to issue a subaward to a subrecipient organization, structured to align with the terms of Uniform Guidance, 2 CFR Part 200.

As of this writing, the current template family is:

FDP Cost Reimbursement Subaward (revised October 2025) — for US-based subrecipients reimbursed against actual allowable costs.
FDP Fixed Amount Subaward (revised October 2025) — for US-based subrecipients paid a predetermined amount tied to milestones or deliverables rather than actual costs.
FDP Foreign Cost Reimbursement Subaward (revised July 2025) — the cost-reimbursement structure adapted for a non-US subrecipient organization.
FDP Foreign Fixed Amount Subaward (revised July 2025) — the fixed-amount structure adapted for a non-US subrecipient organization.

FDP revises the templates periodically (a March 2024 update summary, for example, documents changes to invoicing-frequency language), so always pull the current version directly from the FDP site rather than reusing a saved copy from a prior cycle. FDP also publishes an accompanying FAQ document alongside the templates, with appendices covering required data elements and carryover guidance.

Both FDP-member and non-member institutions may use the templates as-is. FDP’s own guidance is explicit that these are optional model documents provided without warranty — the PTE remains fully responsible for ensuring the terms of its own prime award actually flow down into the subaward, and for whatever institutional legal review its own policies require. An institution that edits a template for its own use is directed to remove references to FDP from the resulting document.

Why the FDP standardized these templates

Standardization exists to cut down the time two institutions spend negotiating an agreement that, in substance, has to say the same thing regardless of which two institutions are involved: allowable-cost rules, reporting cadence, intellectual property, publication rights, and the specific clauses a federal award requires to flow down to a subrecipient. Renegotiating each of those terms bilaterally for every subaward is exactly the kind of duplicated, non-research-generating effort the FDP’s own research has quantified directly.

The FDP’s Faculty Burden Survey — fielded in fall 2005 across 73 FDP member institutions, with 6,081 responding faculty (Rockwell, S., “The FDP Faculty Burden Survey,” Research Management Review 16(2), 2009, pp. 29–44) — found that 42% of the time an average PI spent on a federally funded research project went to administrative tasks rather than the research itself. The survey attributed that burden not to one or two especially onerous requirements, but to the cumulative effect of many separate administrative demands layered on top of each other across agencies and institutions. A subaward negotiated clause-by-clause from a blank page is one contributor to that cumulative load; starting both sides from a shared, pre-vetted template is a direct, structural way to reduce it — not a complete fix for administrative burden, but a concrete instance of the FDP’s stated mission to reduce it.

FDP Cost Reimbursement Subaward: the default for federal cost-reimbursement subawards

This is the template most PTEs reach for first. The subrecipient is reimbursed for actual, documented, allowable costs incurred in performing its portion of the scope of work, up to the subaward’s total budget ceiling, following cost-reimbursement principles under Uniform Guidance. It is the appropriate default whenever the subrecipient’s own effort is difficult to price as a fixed deliverable in advance — most substantive research subawards fall into this category, particularly multi-year subawards with evolving scope.

Flow-down and monitoring obligations under 2 CFR Part 200, Subpart D apply directly: the PTE must make a subrecipient-versus-contractor determination for the relationship (2 CFR § 200.331), meet the requirements for pass-through entities including flow-down of applicable award terms (2 CFR § 200.332), and carry out ongoing subrecipient monitoring — risk assessment, financial oversight, and audit follow-up — for the life of the subaward.

FDP Fixed Amount Subaward: when a predetermined price fits better

Under a fixed-amount subaward, the subrecipient is paid a set amount tied to completing defined milestones or deliverables, not to documented actual costs. This trades the administrative overhead of cost-reimbursement accounting and detailed expenditure reporting for a simpler payment structure — appropriate where the subrecipient’s scope of work is well-defined enough to price up front (a specific analysis, a defined set of samples processed, a discrete technical deliverable), rather than open-ended research effort.

Fixed-amount subawards are a specific, bounded mechanism under Uniform Guidance, not a default option. Per 2 CFR § 200.333, a recipient may issue subawards on a fixed-amount basis, with prior written approval from the federal awarding agency, up to $500,000 per subaward — a threshold raised from $250,000 in the Office of Management and Budget’s April 2024 revision of the Uniform Guidance (effective April 22, 2024). Above that ceiling, or without the agency’s prior approval, a fixed-amount structure is not permitted and the subaward has to use cost reimbursement (or another permitted structure) instead. Fixed-amount subawards must also meet the general standards for fixed-amount awards at 2 CFR § 200.201, including that payments be based on meeting specific requirements of the award and not simply used to avoid the cost-reimbursement rules.

The foreign variants: subawards to non-US institutions

Both the cost-reimbursement and fixed-amount structures have a foreign counterpart — the FDP Foreign Cost Reimbursement Subaward and the FDP Foreign Fixed Amount Subaward — built for subrecipient organizations based outside the United States. The underlying payment logic (actual costs vs. predetermined amount) is the same as the domestic templates; what changes is a set of considerations that only apply once the subrecipient sits outside US jurisdiction:

Indirect cost rate. A foreign subrecipient frequently has no federally negotiated indirect cost rate. Under 2 CFR § 200.414(f), an organization that has never had a negotiated rate may elect a 10% de minimis modified-total-direct-cost (MTDC) rate. NIH’s own policy, separately, reimburses foreign organizations and foreign components of a US award at a fixed 8% MTDC facilities-and-administrative rate without requiring a negotiated rate at all — a narrower, agency-specific figure that a PI should confirm against the specific funding agency’s current policy rather than assume applies universally.
Currency and invoicing. Where possible, PTEs are advised to obtain subrecipient budgets in US dollars to limit exposure to exchange-rate fluctuation, and to set invoicing frequency (commonly at least quarterly) with enough regularity that the PTE can monitor the subrecipient’s financial progress without a long lag.
Export control. Sharing controlled technology, technical data, or equipment with a foreign subrecipient can trigger US export-control obligations under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR, 22 CFR Parts 120–130, administered by the State Department) or the Export Administration Regulations (EAR, 15 CFR Parts 730–774, administered by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security), independent of whatever the subaward’s payment structure is. This determination has to be made on the substance of what’s being shared, not assumed away by using the foreign template.

None of this changes the core subrecipient-versus-contractor or flow-down analysis under 2 CFR §§ 200.331–200.332 — a foreign subaward is still a subaward, subject to the same monitoring obligations as a domestic one, plus the considerations above.

Choosing a template: a practical decision path

Is this a subaward at all? Confirm the relationship is a subrecipient relationship (the other organization performs a defined portion of the substantive scope of work under its own PI and budget) rather than a procurement relationship for goods or services, per the 2 CFR § 200.331 factors. If it’s a procurement, none of these templates apply.
US or foreign subrecipient? That determines whether the domestic or foreign template family applies.
Cost reimbursement or fixed amount? Default to cost reimbursement unless the scope of work is well-defined enough to price as fixed milestones/deliverables, the total is at or under the $500,000 Uniform Guidance ceiling for fixed-amount subawards, and the federal awarding agency has given prior written approval for a fixed-amount structure on this award.
Pull the current version directly from the FDP subaward templates page rather than an institution’s saved copy, since FDP revises the templates periodically.

What the templates don’t replace

A standardized template lowers negotiation friction on the terms that are genuinely common across subawards; it does not remove the PTE’s own compliance obligations. The prime recipient still has to determine what terms from its own award are required to flow down, still owns subrecipient monitoring and risk assessment for the life of the subaward, and still has to apply its own institutional review (legal, export-control, human-subjects, or otherwise) before execution. Using an FDP template is a starting point for that process, not a substitute for it.

Subaward vs. MTA vs. data sharing agreement

A subaward is a funding instrument — it moves federal award dollars to another organization to perform research. It’s a distinct instrument from the two other cross-institutional agreement types most often confused with it:

A Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) governs the transfer of physical research materials (cell lines, reagents, biological specimens) between organizations — no funding necessarily changes hands, and the receiving institution isn’t performing a scope of work for the provider. See the CASRAI guide on the MTA process.
A Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) governs the terms under which datasets move between collaborators or institutions — again, independent of whether federal award funds are being subcontracted. See the CASRAI guide on data sharing agreements between collaborators and institutions.

A single collaborative project can involve all three at once — a subaward funding a partner institution’s portion of the work, an MTA covering a reagent that partner needs, and a DSA governing how the resulting dataset is shared back — each governed by its own agreement, not one document doing all three jobs.

Frequently asked questions

Are institutions required to use the FDP subaward templates?

No. They’re optional model documents. Uniform Guidance doesn’t mandate a specific subaward form — it mandates the substantive terms (flow-down, monitoring, cost principles) that any subaward agreement has to satisfy. The FDP templates are a widely adopted way of meeting those substantive requirements without drafting from scratch, not a federal requirement in themselves.

Can a non-FDP-member institution use them?

Yes — FDP’s own guidance states both member and non-member institutions may use the templates as-is. An institution that edits a template for its own purposes is expected to remove FDP references from the resulting document rather than present an edited version as an official FDP template.

What’s the dollar threshold for a fixed-amount subaward under Uniform Guidance?

$500,000 per subaward, with prior written approval from the federal awarding agency, per 2 CFR § 200.333 as revised effective April 22, 2024 (up from a $250,000 ceiling under the prior version of the rule).

Do foreign subrecipients need a federally negotiated indirect cost rate?

Not necessarily. A foreign organization without a negotiated rate can generally use the 10% de minimis MTDC rate available under 2 CFR § 200.414(f); some agencies apply their own fixed rate instead — NIH, for example, reimburses foreign organizations and foreign components at a fixed 8% MTDC rate rather than requiring a negotiated rate. Confirm the specific funding agency’s current policy before assuming either figure applies.

Is a subaward the same thing as a subcontract?

In practice the terms are often used loosely and interchangeably in research-administration conversation, but the operative distinction under Uniform Guidance is subrecipient vs. contractor, not the label on the document. What matters is whether the other organization is performing a portion of the substantive scope of work with its own PI and budget (a subrecipient relationship, appropriately documented as a subaward) or simply providing goods or services to the prime (a procurement relationship, documented as a contract) — see 2 CFR § 200.331 for the specific factors used to make that determination.

FDP Subaward Templates: Cost Reimbursement, Fixed Amount, and Foreign Variants