Consultants

A Consultant may be an individual or a commercial entity and is a type of contractor (vendor) paid through a purchase order issued by the Office of Procurement. A consultant provides guidance or shares technical expertise on a specific aspect of the scope of work. In the past, the Internal Revenue Service issued audit findings against UMass regarding the payment of individuals as consultants rather than as employees or temporary employees. Therefore, special consideration must be taken in the appointment of consultants. Commonwealth of Massachusetts employees, including faculty from any of the other UMass campuses, may not serve as consultants.

A consultant's roles or characteristics include:

• An individual consultant is a non-UMass employee hired to provide technical expertise in support of a sponsored research project. As a general rule, the activities performed by a non-UMass faculty member who is named as an individual consultant in a proposal must fall outside of the individual’s normal academic duties and cannot make use of his/her institutional facilities, personnel or students. If these criteria are not met, then the faculty member’s home institution should appear as a subrecipient in the UMass proposal rather than as a consultant. 
• A consulting firm is a commercial entity whose regular business activity is to provide services similar to those proposed under the current project.
• UMass and other Commonwealth of Massachusetts employees cannot be paid as consultants on UMass-sponsored projects.
• A consultant lends their expertise and advice in their given field without conducting any independent research on the project. 
• A consultant’s deliverable may be intermittent throughout the project, is not clearly defined and do not ordinarily generate patentable or copyrightable results of an original or substantive nature.
• A consultant’s services are on a “work for hire” basis and all intellectual property or copyrightable rights are assigned to UMass by the consultant.
• A consultant is not subject to the compliance requirements of the Prime Contract.
• A consultant’s fee is based on an hourly or daily rate which is provided and explained in a consultant rate proposal.
• A consultant must provide UMass with a letter that describes their role and indicates the number of days/weeks charged to the grant and provide daily or weekly rate. As a general rule, the activities performed by a non-UMass faculty member who is named as an individual consultant in a proposal must fall outside of the individual’s normal academic duties and cannot make use of his/her institutional facilities, personnel or students. If the consultant letter is on their home institution’s letterhead, the letter should indicate that the individual consultant will not be using their home institution’s facilities for any part of their proposed consultancy. An email to the PI or to OPAS may be substituted if this information is omitted from the signed letter.