If you are unsure whether your fellowship or other external source of funding needs to go through the Sponsored Projects Office, you can contact your PI's Contracts and Grants person (this may change in January 2010 due to 'centralization') or call SPO directly.  Currently the person in SPO who handles ESPM is Deborah Rutkowski-Howard.

If your project needs to go through SPO, the following must occur:
-a preliminary draft of your proposal must be sent to your ESPM contracts and grants person 5 days in advance of sending it to SPO
-which must be 5 days in advance of submission - which means you need to submit it to your contracts and grants person 10 business days before it is due to the agency.
-the content of the proposal can't change, though you can still edit the proposal for style; the final version must also be approved so you should send it to both your ESPM representative in Contracts and Grants and to Deborah or her equivalent in SPO.
-when you submit the preliminary draft you must also fill out a Proposal Review Form.  You'll need some info from your PI who will have to sign it.
-when you submit your final draft, you might need to send a copy of your complete application as well.