These are federally allowable costs incurred from certain sponsored awards to cover the expenses for institutional facility use and institutional administrative services. The F&A costs are requested/budgeted in addition to the direct costs needed to administer the project/program.
Effective Period: 07/01/2021 - 06/30/2025
The short answer is no. Most awards from state and private agencies do not allow indirect costs to be charged. Many, but not all, federal awards do include indirect costs. However, even when indirect costs are allowed on an award, there can often be a cap or limit by percentage or set amount for the period of performance of the grant. The OSP will help determine when indirect costs are allowable and how they can be applied.
The Finance Office calculates the F&A cost expense for each applicable grant budget based on the actual monthly salary and fringe costs posted to that particular grant budget. The F&A cost rate is posted on a separate account line and is not deducted from the grant's program expense budget.
When the F&A cost expense is posted to a grant budget, the corresponding recovered revenue is placed in an institutional reserve fund. The current institutional procedure for use of recovered F&A is to allocate a portion to the Principal Investigator (PI)/Department of the grant; the remaining funds are used for the original intended purpose to cover institutional expenses.
The place to start when requesting cost-sharing is at the Dean/Supervisor level. Under normal circumstances, cost-sharing should not be included in your budget unless specifically required by the granting agency. Historically, it is a complicated process to administer properly and it does not always increase the likelihood of a proposal being funded.
They may be listed by name and department with pertinent percentage of time. External agencies have different designations for such participants. For example, the NSF refers to them as Senior Personnel.
Contact OSP as soon as possible to begin discussions about the subaward.
The PI should provide the following information to OSP:
