The site permission letter Aspen’s IRB will accept: the nine lines, the signatory, the wait

Every other page in an Aspen IRB file can be rewritten tonight. This one cannot, because the signature at the foot of it belongs to somebody who does not answer to you — which is why a letter that is merely late outranks a consent form that is merely wrong.

Miriam Kessler, DNP, APRN · filed 2026-08-23

In short. Aspen’s handbook asks for permission on the site’s own letterhead — email will not suffice — carrying your name, the project title, a short purpose, a statement that the protocol was read, exactly what is permitted, any restrictions, and a signatory who attests to holding that authority.

Which projects need a letter at all?

Aspen draws the line at collaboration rather than at buildings. Its Site Permission Approval section says many projects run in partnership with another site, institution or organisation — a clinic, a school, a company — and that the partner’s permission is submitted with the application.

Appendix C widens it further than most expect. A letter is required from any clinic, institution, organisation, company or group where the work happens, and its illustrations run from a quality-improvement protocol at a clinic, to surveying faculty at a college or district, to posting an announcement in a professional group online — where the group’s owner is the person who must grant permission. A project that never sets foot on a ward can still need a letter, because the recruitment channel belongs to somebody.

So the test is not “am I going somewhere.” It is: whose people, whose premises, whose records, whose list, whose group — and every “whose” that is not yours points at a signature.

What must the letter name?

Appendix C is unusually literal: it prints its requirements as a list rather than leaving them to inference. Read it as a specification and the letter stops being a favour and becomes a page you hand over finished.

The letter, line by line, as Appendix C specifies it
The line	What Aspen asks it to carry	What a reviewer sets beside it
The paper itself	Printed on the organisation’s letterhead. The appendix states plainly that emails will not suffice.	Nothing — it is checked on sight, which is why it fails on sight.
Your name	Named as the person granted the permission.	The name on the application form and on the consent.
The title	The project or study title, as the approved proposal carries it.	The proposal uploaded with the application.
The purpose	One to three sentences, in plain terms, saying what the work is for.	The purpose stated in the application and repeated to participants.
The review statement	A statement that the signatory has reviewed the proposed protocol.	Itself — a signatory who has read nothing has authorised nothing.
The permitted activities	What will actually occur on site, itemised. Appendix C’s own examples run to assessing staff knowledge, gathering de-identified outcome data, interviewing on premises, sending invitation emails, posting a flyer.	The procedures section of the application, and the recruitment set.
The restrictions	Any limits, stated clearly where they apply.	The data answers — what leaves, and with whom.
The signature	Signed by the appropriate person, attesting that they hold the authority to grant it. The appendix prefers a wet signature and accepts an electronic one.	The title printed beneath it.
The signatory block	Title, email address and telephone number of the person signing.	Whether the board can reach them without asking you first.

Two lines carry the weight. The review statement turns a courtesy into a considered permission; the itemised activities stop the letter covering less ground than the project does, a gap invisible until the two pages lie side by side.

Who is entitled to sign it?

Appendix C answers by role rather than by title alone: the signatory must be an administrator with oversight of and responsibility for the clinic, hospital, school, company or organisation. For nursing-side work it names a Chief Medical Officer or a Director as the usual figure; for education-side work, an authority at a district office such as a superintendent, or a department head at a college or university.

The word doing the work is oversight. Enthusiasm is not authority: the delighted manager, the preceptor who arranged the placement, the colleague who passed the idea upward are not wrong to be supportive, but none can grant the organisation’s permission unless the organisation gave them that power. If you cannot say in a sentence what makes this person the right signatory, the board will not manage it either.

Schools carry a second signature by design: Appendix C’s sample text says data collected at a school needs a letter from the district office as well as one from every school involved, since schools differ in what may be collected and in how they assist. Treat multi-site work the same way — one letter for each authority.

Why is the immersion agreement not the same thing?

This is the trap that catches otherwise careful files. Aspen states twice — in Site Permission Approval and at the head of Appendix C — that the IRB letter is not the same approval as any immersion site agreement signed earlier. It is a separate permission, addressed to the board.

The confusion is understandable: an agreement was signed, a site said yes, paperwork exists. But that paperwork governs your presence. The IRB letter governs a named set of activities, having read what they are. One is about attendance, the other about data.

A third document lurks behind both. Where the site runs its own review board, the handbook says the ordinary sequence is to seek that approval before submitting to Aspen, and Appendix E lists other boards’ approvals among the attachments. It notes the inverse case too, where an organisation wants a conditional approval from Aspen first; there, the handbook directs you to the IRB office. Either way, somebody else’s calendar is now inside your file.

Why is it the finding that cures slowest?

Because curing it is not writing. It is waiting.

Consider what other findings cost. A consent missing an element is repaired in an evening; a data answer reading “kept secure” is replaced by four named ones; a category claimed against the design is re-argued from it. Every one of those repairs sits inside your own hands.

The letter needs agreement. It travels whatever internal route the organisation keeps — a compliance reading, a legal desk, an absent executive, a committee sitting to its own schedule. None of that begins because your file is otherwise finished, and no later effort starts it retroactively. That is why our route diagram draws site permission as a tributary joining the main line early rather than as a station near the end: it is the only step whose clock belongs to a third party.

The compounding version is worse. A file complete but for the letter is not nearly finished; it cannot be read at all, held behind one page. Appendix E is blunt about incomplete submissions, and the criteria the board applies before approving anything include appropriate site permission being secured.

How do you make the request small?

Stop asking anybody to compose a letter. Appendix C invites this: where the signatory has no template, draft the page on their behalf, replacing the guidance text and cleaning it before handing it over.

That reframes the request: not “would you write something for my board,” but “here is a page for your signature, on your paper.” It also removes a round trip, since a letter you drafted already names the activities in your application’s own words.

Ask the site first whether it has a template of its own. Appendix C tells you to check before reaching for Aspen’s.
Identify the signatory by oversight rather than by warmth, and confirm the title you will print beneath the signature.
Draft the page yourself against the nine lines above, with every activity itemised from the plan.
Proof it and strip the guidance colouring before the page reaches the signatory, then say the word letterhead when you send it.

What happens when the letter and the application disagree?

They disagree more often than anybody expects, being written apart and by different hands. Three mismatches account for most of it, all visible before filing.

The first is scope: the letter permits interviews while the application also pulls records, so the records have no permission behind them. The second is identity: the letter names the site loosely — a system rather than the unit — while the application names the exact setting. The third is data: the application says de-identified extraction, the letter is silent on what leaves the building, and silence grants nothing.

None is hard to fix; all are slow, because each fix is a second trip to a signatory who has already done you a favour. This is the reading we run before filing — the letter against the data answers, the procedures, the recruitment set — and it is the part of the free review described on the FAQ that most often changes what somebody does next week rather than next month.

What to do next

If the project touches anybody else’s people, premises, records or mailing list, the letter is on the critical path from today. Identify the signatory, draft the page for them, and set it moving while the remainder of the file is still under construction. Handing the sequence over — letter drafted, application written to match, submission prepared, every reply answered — is what we carry end to end, and the first read costs nothing.

Send the file as it stands. We read it the way Aspen’s board will and write the findings back.

Request the free application review

Independent consultants, unaffiliated with Aspen University. The project and its findings stay yours; the determination is the board’s. Also filed: the attachment-by-attachment checklist, the route from proposal to determination, and the four data answers.

Sources

Requirements and forms change. Confirm anything specific against Aspen’s current handbook or IRB portal before you file.