the site permission letter
Whose signature the board is actually waiting for.
Herzing's IRB does not publish a site permission template, which surprises people who go looking for one. What its applications do name is a Location/Sponsor, a Program Chair's letter where one applies, and any external board's approval letter — and none of those write themselves. The letter is rarely hard to compose. It is hard to obtain, because the hand that signs it belongs to someone else.
Annika Brandstetter, DNP, APRN · filed 2026-08-23
Herzing publishes no site permission template. The letter still has to arrive on the organisation's letterhead, signed by someone with authority over access, naming your project and the exact activities it permits. Ask for it before the folder is otherwise ready.
Does Herzing publish a site permission form?
No — and that absence is worth understanding rather than working around. The two applications on Herzing's IRB page, the Research Protocol Application and the Healthcare Improvement or Innovation Project Application, each open with a submission checklist. Neither checklist contains a line called "site permission letter." What they contain instead are two adjacent lines: a copy of the application and approval letter from any external IRB, where one exists, and a letter of approval from the Program Chair of the affiliated institution, where one applies. Step 2 of both forms then asks, in a single narrow field, for a Location/Sponsor.
That field is the whole of what the board is told about your setting unless you tell it more. A clinic name typed into a box establishes nothing about whether the clinic knows, agrees or has authorised anything. The letter is not a Herzing form you fill out; it is the evidence that the name in that field is real, and its absence reads as an open question.
Because there is no published template, the shape of a usable letter comes from the approval criteria the board applies rather than from a Herzing document. Under 45 CFR 46.111 a board has to satisfy itself that participants are chosen equitably and that privacy and confidentiality are adequately provided for — both of which turn on what an organisation has actually agreed to allow inside its walls. Where Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal later adds a named permission form, that form governs and this article does not.
Who has the authority to sign?
The signature question ends more letters than the wording does. A supportive charge nurse, a preceptor, a manager who is delighted by the idea — none of them necessarily controls access to the organisation's people, premises, distribution channels or records. Authority sits where the organisation says it sits, and that is a question to ask out loud rather than assume.
It also helps to see that site permission is only one of several signatures a Herzing filing can involve, each settling something different. Confusing them is how a folder ends up with three enthusiastic endorsements and no permission.
| Signature | Where it appears | What it settles | What cannot stand in for it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Principal investigator | The signature block at the end of either application | That the answers on the form are an accurate account of the project | Nothing — this one is yours |
| Faculty sponsor or project faculty | The same block; on the Research Protocol Application the faculty signing confirms the application is accurate and accepts responsibility as Co-PI | That a named faculty member carries the project alongside you | A verbal go-ahead inside a course |
| Program Chair | A third signature line on the current Healthcare Improvement or Innovation Project Application; also a checklist line for a Program Chair letter from an affiliated institution | That the programme itself stands behind the filing | The project faculty's signature, which is a separate line |
| The site's authorising official | A letter you obtain and attach; Herzing supplies no template for it | That the organisation grants access to its people, premises, channels or records | An encouraging email from a colleague or supervisor |
| An external IRB | Its own application and approval letter, attached per the checklist | That a board with jurisdiction over the site has reviewed the work | Your own reading that the site "has no IRB" — confirm it with the site |
One line on that current form deserves a second look, because it is new. The superseded edition of the improvement application, still findable online, carried two signature lines. The edition Herzing publishes now carries three, adding the Program Chair. A folder assembled from a downloaded copy of the older form is short a signature before anyone has read a word of it — which is the plainest possible argument for pulling every form fresh on the day you build the folder.
What must the letter name?
With no template to copy, the letter has to carry its own authority. Seven things make it usable, and each one exists because a board would otherwise have to guess:
- The organisation's letterhead. Plain paper and forwarded message chains read as correspondence, not as permission.
- The signatory's name, title and the basis of their authority. One clause — "as Director of Nursing, I am authorised to grant access to…" — removes the question entirely.
- Your project, named as the application names it. The title on the letter and the Project Title field should be one string of words, not two paraphrases.
- You, named as the principal investigator. Permission granted to a job title rather than a person travels badly.
- Every activity permitted, itemised. Recruiting on site, using internal email or newsletters to reach people, meeting participants on the premises, observing a process, accessing a defined set of records — each one either appears or is not covered.
- The records, if records are involved, and whether identifiers travel with them. A letter that permits "access to data" and an application that describes a chart pull are not describing the same act.
- A date. Undated permission cannot be matched to the filing, and a letter obtained long before the folder is built often has to be re-issued.
Then read the letter against the rest of the folder. The site in the letter, the setting described in the application, the place named in the consent documents and the location on any recruitment material must be the same organisation doing the same things. That agreement between pockets is what the application checklist is for; drift between them is what a returned folder usually turns out to be.
Why does the letter arrive last?
Every other pocket is under your own hand. You can redraft a consent document tonight, rebuild a data security plan before breakfast, and re-title an instrument in a minute. The letter moves at the speed of an organisation you do not run: a compliance reading, a signatory who is on leave, a research office with its own intake, a legal review of any agreement that names a university as a party.
Herzing's board sits on a published calendar. The Statement of Principles sets applications to reach the IRB Chair by 5:00 p.m. Central Time on the first Monday of each eight-week academic term, and the IRB page pairs each meeting date with its materials-due date. Nobody outside the board predicts what happens after that — we never do, and neither should anyone else. But the deadline before it is public, and a signature you have not yet requested cannot be made to land on it. That is the entire case for asking early.
There is a compounding trap: ask far too early and the letter describes a project that has since changed shape. The workable order is to settle the design and the determination first, then request the letter with the activity list already drafted, so the signatory approves a page rather than composing one. That order sits inside how the practice works, and it is why the first reading of most folders ends with "request this now" rather than "rewrite this."
What if the site is Herzing itself?
This one catches people who assume an internal setting is the easy case. The Research Protocol Application asks whether participants will be Herzing University faculty, staff or others enrolled there, and answers its own question in a parenthesis: if yes, the study requires full IRB review. Internal does not mean lighter. It means the highest review level on the form, plus whatever internal permission the university's current IRB handbook or portal requires for reaching its own community.
The same application's acknowledgements add a condition that outlives approval: data collected from Herzing's constituents is treated as proprietary, and publications or external reports produced from the work may not identify, reference or implicate the university. If your dissemination plan assumes you will name the setting, read that clause before you design around it.
What does a letter that fails look like?
Four patterns account for most of them. A message of support that never grants anything — warmth is not authorisation. A grant of the wrong activities, permitting interviews when the plan also pulls records. A signature from someone whose role does not include the access being granted. And a letter that names a site the rest of the folder does not name, usually because the project moved and the letter did not follow. Each costs a round trip through a board that meets on its own schedule, which is why the letter is the pocket we open first.
What to do next
If your project touches an organisation — any organisation, including your own employer — find out today who controls access there, and ask for the letter with the activity list already drafted. Ask for the free application review and name every organisation your project reaches. We will say which of them need a letter, where the authority to sign is likely to sit, and whether an external board is in play; if none of it applies to you, that is the answer you get. We draft each letter for the signatory's own hand and match its activities to the application, then carry the folder through filing and every reply. The project, its data and its findings remain yours throughout, and the board's decision is always the board's. The FAQ covers what happens once the folder is filed, and the step-by-step walk-through puts the letter in its place in the sequence.
Sources
- Herzing University, Institutional Review Board (IRB) — applications, bylaws, resources and IRB calendar — herzing.edu/institutional-review-board-irb
- Herzing University, IRB Application for Research Protocol Approval (submission checklist; Location/Sponsor; participant questions; signature block) — herzing.edu/…/IRB_Research_Protocol_Application_1025.pdf
- Herzing University, IRB Application for Improvement or Innovation Project Approval (checklist; three signature lines) — herzing.edu/…/Healthcare_Improvement_InnovationProject_Application.pdf
- Herzing University, superseded IRB Application for Quality Improvement or Innovation Project Approval (two signature lines) — herzing.edu/…/institutional_revie-board_application_dnp_projects.pdf
- Herzing University IRB, Statement of Principles (submission deadline; internal and external requests; review levels) — herzing.edu/…/IRB_Statement_of_Principles.pdf
- Herzing University IRB, Bylaws (meeting schedule, quorum, action on proposals) — herzing.edu/…/IRB_Bylaws.pdf
- Herzing University, DNP Capstone Projects (settings in which these projects run) — herzing.edu/bhwet-grant/dnp-projects
- 45 CFR 46.111 — equitable selection and privacy provisions, among a board's required findings — Legal Information Institute
Herzing's forms and IRB pages are revised without notice; where this article and Herzing's current IRB handbook or portal disagree, the current material governs. This practice is independent and is not affiliated with Herzing University.
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