GAMSU
Grants Administration Management and Support Unit
Welcome to the Grants Administration and Management Support Unit (GAMSU) portal. This page/section will help you start submitting your project/grant details, tracking and modification or updating with (quarterly submissions). Now that you have an account, go ahead and add your project or grant.
- How to access the GAMSU Database Management System?
In the url/address bar type: gamsuportal.mak.ac.ug
Please login with Mak email in case you forgot the password click on Reset Your Password and Password reset instructions will be sent to your registered email address.
- How to create an account on the GAMSU Database Management System?
Click on Create New Account and follow steps
An email will be sent to your account in order for you to activate it.
Now that you have an account, go ahead and add your project or grant.
Adding a Project/Grant/Quarterly Accounts
- Go to the left-hand panel and click “Add a project“. The link is only available to those who have the right to add projects (See pic on the right).
- On the new page, fill in the required information, upload the required documentation and submit.
- Note: If you’re unable to complete the form, you can save it and return to it later to complete it. (You can be able to view all your form submissions under the Submissions tab on your dashboard)
- After completing the submission, you will get a notification that your project information was received and is now pending verification.
- Note: Before you submit your project/grant, you’re advised to check If your project information already exists on this platform. Click Project Ownership and search. If you find that your project exits, you can request for ownership of the project, by clicking the Request for Ownership button. After verification, you will either be notified that your request was granted or rejected.
- You’re also advised to add your quarterly reports at the end of every quarter of your project/grants’ lifetime.
THE GAMSU DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
One of GAMSU’s objectives is to regularly map and maintain an updated database of grants and funding opportunities.
To achieve this objective, GAMSU DBMS has been created as a platform to track and monitor grants within the University from start to end of the project and effect efficient administration and management of grants with compliance to University laws and laws of the government of Uganda.
Benefits of GAMSU DBMS
- Staying Compliant
Each of your grants likely have numerous compliance regulations that you need to understand and adhere to, and as recipients, you will need to undergo periodic compliance reviews to assure requirements are being met. Some of these requirements include eligibility of reimbursed expenses, adherence to procurement requirements, financial management oversight and more.
2. Generate Data for Reporting
Grant management is often linked to audits which are time-consuming processes. Grant funders typically have reporting requirements, including financial updates and progress checks.
3. Organise your information in one place
Access your data- history, due dates, reporting requirements, contacts, goals, budget and more. No more binders, no more shuffling through papers. Instead, you’ll have searchable data all in one place.
4. Manage all grants from start to finish.
Track every detail of the process from start to finish, including status, submission method, amount, and all important dates. Know where you are in every application.
5. Enhances teamwork and communication.
6. Ensures Transparency.
7. Decrease Paperwork.
Features of the GAMSU DBMS
The other features of GAMSU DBMS include but are not limited to the following.
- Provides overview of overall Grant contribution towards the sustainable development goals (SDG)
- Provides overview of overall Grant contribution towards Human Capital development of Makerere University community.
- Overall Makerere University overhead/institutional fee contribution from projects and grants.
- Overall grant/project distribution according to Gender, College, Unit
GAMSU-DBMS development is divided into 2 modules.
Module 1 provides the Principal Investigators with a platform where they add project/grant information which is available to them at the start. Such information includes:
- Title
- Grant amount and distribution over project’s duration
- Grant funders
- Project team information, objectives, expectations, outputs
- Project status
- Institutional fee declaration
- Budgeting per Project’s year (Financial year)
Module 2 provides principal investigators a platform where they can add quarterly information about budget expenditure in regards to their project/grant. Such information includes:
- Adding/selecting a financial year
- Selecting a quarter
- Adding amount spent in the quarter
- Adding balance in regards to the amount spent and the quarter’s budget
- Adding funds carried forward (if any) to next quarter.
- Include funds carried forward (if any) for previous quarter.
How to access it and how to get accounts
- The portal is hosted and can be accessed by going to https://gamsuportal.mak.ac.ug
- Principal investigators get accounts on the platform from GAMSU to add the project details.
- There’s an option to search all titles of the projects. This option provides PIs with an opportunity to claim pre-existing projects.
- GAMSU-DBMS is an access-control governed system with various permissions and restrictions accorded to PIs, Grant Officers and admins.
|
#
|
Module
|
Status (Completion)
|
Comments
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
1
|
Module 1
|
99%
|
Adding annual budgeting information for project’s duration
|
|
2
|
Module 2
|
10%
|
Adding quarterly budget submissions
|
|
3
|
GAMSU Website
|
50%
|
Development in progress
|
Data input
The Unit has collected data on the existing projects within the University, using a form designed by the Bursar’s Office with input from GAMSU.
The process of entering the received data is currently done. Tentative consolidated information
regarding the projects within the University has been captured. It includes the title of the project, duration of project in months, objectives, Target SDGs, PI contact information, Budget in USD, Institutional fees, project status whether ongoing or closed and funder detail.
As of Tue, July 19, 2022 six hundred twenty-six (626) projects have been fed into the GAMSU database with each targeting different SDGs and objectives. The Projects Grant and Donations Cumulative total funds stand at USD three billion five million seven hundred eight thousand ninety-five ($ 3,005,708,095).
The infographics below show a sneak-peek of the data Breakdown as captured by the GAMSU Database:
The charts above show the distribution of projects in Makerere University with the College of Health Sciences (CHS) in the lead, four hundred eighty (480) projects and DGRT, RPC, MCFSP, LAW, GMD, COBAMS and PDD having the least number of projects each has less than five basing on the data received.
The graph shows the distribution of funds by college in USD; As of the project data in the database, CHS receives up to a tune of $ 2,265, 730, 919 making it top in generating revenue for the institution followed by the College of Natural Sciences (CoNaS) with $ 673, 797, 403.
The Database captures each project’s contribution to Human capital development. This is measured by how the project contributes to the performance, capabilities and resources of human capital. The parameters used to measure this in the system include Community development, Early career development, Skills development, PHD, Graduate development, and Undergraduate development (Refer to the pie chart above).
Pie chart above is showing gender distribution percentages of Project Principal Investigators. 62.9% (394 PIs) (navy blue) male, 33.5% (210 PIs) (Maroon) female, 3.4% (21 PIs) (orange color) gender field was left blank and 0.2% (1 PI) preferred not to answer. Among the Project Principal Investigators males are more. Refer to the graph below for the gender distribution across the units:
Observations:
- The data shared with GAMSU is very raw and lacks some information for example none of the projects shows track of institutional fees.
- Some Principle Investigators are not cooperative in providing some information about projects.
Way forward:
- Principal Investigators and College research officers will get GAMSU database accounts to be able to enter the data on the system in the guise of minimizing gaps.
- Sensitization on the use of the database will be held regularly.
Welcome to the Grants Administration and Management Support Unit (GAMSU) portal. This page/section will help you get started in submitting your project/grant details, tracking and modification or updating with (quarterly submissions). Now that you have an account, go ahead and add your project or grant.
But before you need to fill a form for user access rights where an account is created and sent to your email for activation. Login to gamsuportal.mak.ac.ug using your institutional email address.
Adding a Project/Grant
Go to the left hand panel and click “Add a project”. Link is only available to those who have the rights to add projects (See pic on the right).
On the next page, you should be able to add the following (You can save the form and return later to complete it):
Information about Project/Grant
- Project title
- Grant number or ID (if available)
- Consortium specification (Specify if your project is part of or not part of a consortium)
- If it is part of a consortium, please add the consortium members.
- Select and add your university unit and enter any sub-units (preferably in full and block letters and in the proper order/hierachy)
- Summary/Objective of Project (Add the projects’ main objective or synopsis or abstract)
- Expected outputs of Project : List the expected outputs of the project in summary
- Project outputs: Tick/check the outputs expected to be produced at the end of the project
- Sustainable Development Goal – Select to add all the relevant SDGs your project meets. (Add more than 1.)
- Human Capital Development – Select to add the relevant contributions to human capital development (Add more than 1)
Personnel Information
- Principal Investigator Info – Enter the title, First Middle & Last name, Gender, email and phone
- Core Team members – Enter all the core team members information, First name, Last name and role on project.
Project Status
- Select the current status of project from options
- Enter project start date
- You can optionally add the project end date
- Enter the expected duration of project in months
Budget
- State the currency source of funds (Our primary source for the database is United States Dollars). You can inform us of other currencies in case your source of funds isn’t in US$, as well the amount awarded in that currency.
- State the total budget in USDs (After conversion to US$ incase the source wasn’t in US$)
- Amount of funds coming to Makerere (Declare the amount of funds (off the budget) coming to Makerere University. In cases of Consortium based projects, this amount is a % of the total grant declared above. Otherwise, the amount here should be the same as the amount stated above.)
- Declare the date when the funds arrived.
- Institutional Fees: State whether your project is or isn’t exempted from the institutional overhead. If your project is exempted, attach proof (pdf)
- Funders information:
- Declare if your project is co-funded or not co-funded
- If you selected co-funded option, you will declare all co-funders and their corresponding amounts
- If you selected non co-funded option, you’ll then declare the one funder.
- Funder information is found in the database. If your funder isn’t listed, you can save and contact us to add them.
Project budgeting & Distribution
- Total Budget – Declare the total budget in UGX
- Funds distribution – Declare your budgeting distribution according to the financial years in your project duration, and the budget allocation to those financial years.
- Submit