Name: Hui-Ling Lin
Lin 1
Name: Hui-Ling Lin
Course: English 6510
Instructor: Dr. Gu
Project: Graduate research paper
Topic: Preparing the Budget section in a proposal
Introduction:
The budget in a grant proposal can be complicated. It should be done carefully and accurately, as it is a direct refection of the work being proposed. Most sponsors provide guideline for budget preparation and may provide forms for the submission of budget information. The budget request should be realistic for the project and reflect the goals of the project. It should request sufficient resources needed to carry out the project, but it should not be excessively high. Budget information should be completed and unambiguous. The budget should be reviewed carefully to ensure that ineligible items do not appear in the budget and that adequate attention has been given to cost sharing. Most reviewers and all program directors look carefully at the proposed budgets to fine evidence of careful reflection and realistic project planning.
For some sciences project proposals, which are often conducted at universities, the budget is more complicated than others because projects are often ongoing for years or involving interdisciplinary. The purpose of this paper is proving guidelines for budget development and highlight specific budgetary restrictions and requirement, especially in a science grant proposal.
Steps in the budget development process
Step 1: identify the total costs of the project
Direct costs:
According to the National Science Foundation, direct costs are those which can be identified specifically with a particular sponsored project and which can be directly assigned to such activities, relatively easily and with a high degree of accuracy. For example, the supplies needed for a research project are easy to identify, as are the salaries of the individuals who will work on the project and travel expenses for those individuals. The following items can be included into the direct costs:
a)Salaries and wages- the salaries of faculty members and other personnel associated directly with the project constitute appropriate direct costs and may be requested in proportion to the effort devoted to the project. Compensation for time normally spent on research within the term of appointment is considered to be included within the faculty member’s regular organizational salary. The following expenses should be listed in the budget- the salaries of the faculty and other senior personnel, the postdoctoral associate and total amount of salaries per year in each category. The budget may request funds for support of graduate or undergraduate research assistant to help carry out the proposed research. Compensation classified as salary payments must be requested in the salaries and wages category. Any direct costs requested for tuition remission must be listed in the “other” category under other direct costs.
b)Equipment- equipment is defined as an item of property that has an acquisition cost of $5,000 or more and an expected service life of more than one year. Items of needed equipment must be listed individually by description and estimated cost and adequately justified. Allowable items ordinarily will be limited to research equipment and apparatus not already available for the conduct of the work. Personal-purpose equipment is not eligible for support unless primarily or exclusively used in the actual conduct of scientific research.
c)Travel- travel and its relation to the proposed activities must be specified and itemized by destination and cost. Funds may be request for field work, attendance at meeting and conferences, and other travel associated with the proposed work. In order to quality for support, attendance at meeting or conferences must enhance the personnel ability to perform the work, plan extensions of it, or disseminate its results.
d)Others: other expenses can be included in a sciences project are:
- General types of expendable materials and supplies required with their estimated costs,
- Costs of documenting, preparing, publishing, or making available to other the findings and products of the work conducted under the grant,
- Anticipated consultant services with the details of each individual’s expertise, primary organizational affiliation, normal daily compensation rate, the number of days of expected service, and consultant’s costs.
- Computer services, including computer-based retrieval of scientific, technical and education information.
Indirect costs:
According to the Office Research Support at Duke University, indirect costs is also known as facilities and administrative costs, which is defined as those that are incurred for common or joint objectives, and which cannot be identified readily and specifically with a particular sponsored project. The following requests cannot be granted:
- Solely for the support of travel, equipment, construction of facilities, or doctoral dissertations;
- For participant support costs,
- To foreign grantees; and
- To individuals (e.g fellowship awards).
Direct or indirect costs:
There are three categories of expenses which may be either direct or indirect costs depending upon the anticipated use of the items or work of the staff to be charged to the sponsor. If any of the items or work of expenses are included a proposal budget, they require a detailed justification.
a)Local telephone service: if a phone or line can be identified exclusively with a project and will only be used for research or project activities, permission may be secured to charge the line as a direct cost. Examples of services which would meet the criteria are: a modem used for twenty-four hour collection of seismic data from around the country, or a hot-line reserve for callers.
b)Administrative and clerical salaries: federal regulations state the clerical and administrative salaries should general be treated as an indirect cost. The expenses under the following circumstances may be considered direct costs:
- Large, complex programs that entail assembling and managing teams of investigators from a number of institutions,
- Projects that involve extensive data accumulation, analysis and entry, surveying, tabulation, cataloging, search literature, and reporting, such as epidemiological studies, clinical trials, and retrospective clinical records studies,
- Projects that require making travel and meeting arrangements for a large number of participants,
- Projects where the principal focus is the preparation of manuals and large reports, books, and monographs,
- Projects that are geographically inaccessible to normal departmental administrative services, such as seagoing research vessels, radio astronomy projects, and other research field sites,
- Individual projects requiring significant amounts of project-specific database management; individualized graphics or manuscript preparation; animal or human protocol, IRB preparations, and/or other project-specific regulatory protocols; and multiple project-related investigator coordination and communication.
c)General purpose supplies and equipment: only supplies and equipment which will be used primarily or exclusively for grant activities can be considered a direct cost and the expense must be clearly justified.
Unallowable costs:
Because of their sensitivity, the following categories of unallowable costs are highlighted:
- Entertainment,
- Meals and coffee breaks,
- Alcoholic beverages,
- Commencement expenses,
- Gifts, prize, and awards,
- Alumni or fundraising activities,
- Lobbing,
- Faculty and exempt staff salary in excess of base rates paid by the institution,
- Social events.
Residual funds:
The residual funds are used only for budgets for incremental funding requests on continuing grants. Grantees provide a rationale funds in excess of 20% as part of the annual project report.
Amount of the request:
The total amount of funds include amount of direct costs, indirect costs, and the residual funds. For multiple-year proposals, a budget for each year is usually expected, as well as a cumulative budget. Consideration should be made for cost increases and inflation from one year to the next. An inflationary factor of 4% is suggested to be used if the principal investigator has not access to exact costs for the out years of a project (Hall and Howlett, 2003).
Cost sharing and matching:
Cost-sharing is that portion of a project’s costs not borne by the sponsor. The costs may be contributed by third parties. For instance, the Kersge Foundation supports undergraduate science programs in need of equipment renovation, replacement, or upgrade for student/faculty research. The foundation only provide one-forth of project costs. A grantseeker has to have the three-forth of fund raise before applying funds from this foundation.
Lump sum salary budgets:
There are increases in the number of large interdisciplinary proposals being prepared. The issue of maintaining the confidentiality of salary information can be a serious problem as budgets are viewed by more and more people in the process of preparing the proposal. While this is an issue for all proposals, this is of particular concern with the National Science Foundation Fastlane budgets where everyone with access to proposal online has full access to all budgets of the proposal. In these cases, the proposing organization seeking grants from the National Science Foundation may request that salary data on senior personnel not be released to persons outside the Government during the review process. A cover letter with “proprietary or privileged information” will be used to show when the proposal contains confidential budgetary information.
Step2: arrange budget items
Budget items can be arranged by category, by time, or by source. If the project is more than one year, most funders will want to see the amount of money you plan to spend each year. A budget chat would be useful to clarify the expenses in each item each year.
Step3: transfer the data into their format
Some funders ask for specific format for the budget section. Funders look for in the following considerations:
- Do the salaries and benefits reflect the rest of the field?
- Is professional development part of the budget?
- Does the organization have a healthy balance of types of income?
- Is the cost of fundraising included?
- Are you in a position to seize an opportunity?
- If the current year’s budget predicts a deficit, does your organization have a plan for overcoming it in the following year?
Budget justification:
The level of justification required in a proposal varies among sponsors. Generally speaking, the least detail is required by foundation and the most detail is required by the federal government when the award will be in the form of a contract.
Principal investigators must be prepared to explain to the sponsor how they arrived at their cost estimated. If a sponsor decides to fund a project, they may ask for further budget detail or verification of certain costs. There are generally three ways to describe the basis for a cost: actual cost for items such as salaries, vendor price or quotes such as equipment, airfare, lodging, or prior expenses such as supplies (Carlson, 2002).
There a few trick ways to for a beginning independent investigator:
- Only ask minimum amount of money for the project. If you pad the budget, the reviewers are likely to cut it by more than the amount you padded,
- Don’t ask for megabucks, and then show the agency that you are complete a good small project for relatively few dollars, and they will be more willing to entrust you with more money to do bigger project in the future,
- Consist the budget with the experiment you propose.
Always remember justify everything. Don’t assume that anything will be obvious to the reviewer.
Reference:
Carloson, Min. “Winning grants.” California: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.
“Grant proposal guide.” NSF.GOV 31 March 2005. <
Hall, M., and Howlett, S. “Getting funded- the complete guide to writing grant proposals.” 4th Ed. Oregon: Portland State University, 2003.
“Preparing the budget.” Office of Research at Duke University 4 April 2005.
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