New Faculty Information Series Session #5: Budgets and Justifications

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: My name is Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello. And I am a research development specialist here in the Office of Research Advancement and Partnerships. And I am going to, make a few announcements, and then I’m going to hand it over to, Michelle and Becky from the College of Arts and Sciences grants and fellowships support team to talk about budgets and budget justification.

Michelle Hendrickson: Hi. My name is Michelle Hendrickson, and I’m the assistant director of research services for the College of Arts and Science. And, Becky, do you want to introduce yourself?

Becky James: Hi, I’m Becky, James. I’m the Assistant director for Research Advancement in the or I’m sorry. Let’s get that wrong research development. Also in the College of Arts and Sciences, and I, for whatever it’s worth. I used to do Cheryl’s job. I’ve moved from ORAP to the College of arts and sciences way wow! Back in 2019.

Becky James: So, I’ve been at this a while.

Michelle Hendrickson: All right. Alright and to get started we’ll start going over, you know, creating your budget or WSU budget and budget justification. WSU budget information is WSU budget has a template located on the ORSO website under forms and templates. We try to use the most current one, because things are changing all the time. You want to work with your research administrator to create your WSU budget.

Michelle Hendrickson: You want to check with your college or your department to see who that is. There is a contact list on the ORSO’s website as well. All WSU budgets must be certified by your research administrator or your grants administration and then routed through the eREX system. And note that you know research administrators go through extensive training to do these budgets.

Michelle Hendrickson: So do work with them. All proposal submissions need a WSU budget, even if it is a proposed budget. So if they basically say you’re getting $3,000. We don’t care what you do with it. WSU does want to see what you’re doing with that budget. So we do want to prepare an internal WSU budget. There’s a timeline for proposal submissions, and it’s always good to go over this to talk about budgets, just because to know the process and how the workflow is.

Michelle Hendrickson: So you always want to contact your grant administrator or your RA right away. You start doing your prep work, drafting things, and finalizing your documents. And then it goes to your research administrator to review and get that eREX going. That also requires 48 hours, which is 2 full business working days, that they need that by, and then ORSO receives that eREX that has all your documents and budget in there.

Michelle Hendrickson: So they have time to review before your proposal is actually due to the agency. This is from our standpoint, and the College of Arts and science, so it may vary from every department or college. But when you work with us as a research administrator, we can start that WSU draft budget. We can start your eREX.

Michelle Hendrickson: We can start your proposal online. These are just some ideas of showing you, you know, working with your pre award Grant administrator the things that we can help you with.

Michelle Hendrickson: Okay creating a budget. So 1st of all, Number One, you want to review your solicitation and guidelines from the sponsor. So when you get that RFP on that document, you want to go over it multiple times. This can help you determine what’s allowed in your budget. So, knowing what’s allow allowable cost, and also helps you calculate the allowable indirect.

Michelle Hendrickson: So whether indirects are allowed, or if there’s a set rate on that. So you want to make sure you go over that call various extensively. and then you want to develop and format your budget working with your grant administrator or your RA. And then, lastly, you want to start creating a budget justification.

Michelle Hendrickson: So what is a budget? Michelle Hendrickson: best estimate of financial resources needed to accomplish your project. Includes a budget justification which provides an explanation of the included cost. Allowables are the direct cost and then allowable indirect are your F&A, which creates the total project cost. Allowables meaning the cost, are reasonable, allocable, consistently applied, and agreeable with the sponsors specifications.

Michelle Hendrickson: So each agency has different rules. So it is important to work with your Grant administrator and read the RFP. To see what is allowed. Not all categories on a budget are always allowed on a proposal.

Michelle Hendrickson: Okay, format the budget. So different sponsors require different formats of budget. So check the solicitation. There’s general guidelines to determine specific programs, formatting and etc. So again, we talk about WSU internal budget. We always want to have a WSU internal budget. They’re extremely helpful to your departments when the award comes in, and there’s the award management and also setting it up through the sponsored programs.

Michelle Hendrickson: So remember applying correct fringe and F&A rates to both the sponsors and the internal budgets. Internal budgets must match the sponsored budget categories. So we do want to make sure that They are looking, you know, pretty much in the same categories. So there’s no issues after the ward comes in.

Michelle Hendrickson: And again, I talked about WSU has a budget template. It’s located on the ORSO website. And there’s like, a link there. But it’s basically an excel spreadsheet. This is what our Grant administrators and RAs have been trained to use. It has got formulas in there. It’s available on their website. But remember, always work with your grant administrator because cells do get broken.

Michelle Hendrickson: We have faculty reusing old budgets. So benefit rates change different things like that. So it is good to work with your administrator from the very beginning because we want to make sure that those numbers that you’re get gathering ORSO on almost a daily basis of thos changes.

Michelle Hendrickson: Okay. So reviewing solicitation and guidelines. So you want to review the sponsored guidelines. So if it’s a federal agency like NIH or NSF, they have guidelines out there. And then you want to follow the request for proposal or the NOA. They have different guidelines there.

Michelle Hendrickson: So you always want to contact your Grant administrator. And then looking for minimum and maximum duration of the project, so it may say, like, there’s only 3 years allowed on the project. So, knowing that there’s limitations within the call, that it says, you know, there’s a timeframe, and then usually there’s a maximum allowed, or what they are normally seeing for an award amount.

Michelle Hendrickson: So we are able, as a Grant administrator, to go and find those amounts and help guide you through preparing your budget. And again, like I said, there’s some categories that are not allowed on your budget, and they’re usually in the call, letting you know there’s no travel allowed or no equipment, and different things like that.

Michelle Hendrickson: So you definitely do want to. Again, read through that solicitation. So in our office we have an intake sheet, and we usually send them a link to our intake sheet, and the faculty member or grad student fills out as much as they can. But we’ve also we have them to start the talk of a budget.

Michelle Hendrickson: They’ll send us a basic email from the faculty member saying, You know, I want the start date and end date. So those are really important. So we know how much to do for the future. If there’s going to be cost of living increases different things like that. So it is important to know that start and end date when you’re starting to prepare a budget. WSU budget each year, an example would be like, you know, a faculty member PI is asking for one summer month per year, one grad student at 12 months, per year, $30,000 and supplies, and you know, $6,000 and services.

Michelle Hendrickson: So that’s just getting that conversation going. So then we, as your Grant administrator, can go in and start populating that WSU template budget to see what that’s going to look like.

Michelle Hendrickson: And if anybody has questions just please let me know. So as we’re going along.

Michelle Hendrickson: The typical budget categories are very similar to down below, and most like Federal agencies or in WSU’s use budget. So it’ll have, like personnel wages and salaries, goods and services. Travel, equipment., consulting personal services, sub awards, participant support, and then the facilities and administration which is also called F&A, or indirect. There’s multiple names out there.

Michelle Hendrickson: It’s called overhead. So there’s multiple names out there for you know the facilities administration costs. So just be aware of that, and then we’ll go into each category a little bit to talk about those. Common direct costs are, you know again, your wages and salaries and benefits, including students. Travel cost and knowing whether it’s domestic or foreign, because that’s really important for us as a Grant administrator of knowing, you know, if there’s international activities and different things like that.

Michelle Hendrickson: Equipment is greater than $5,000 and over. And that’s currently what our policy is now. Things are changing because uniform guidance has put out their new rule that it’ll things will go up. But we haven’t implemented that here at WSU until we get our indirect cost rate agreement in place yet.

Michelle Hendrickson: So we are still going by these older rules that WSU is saying. These are what we’re going by until they change, right, so, for our university. So other common things are your materials, and supplies, your subaward. And when you do a sub award, those include the sub awards direct cost and indirect will be considered your direct cost here at WSU.

Michelle Hendrickson: Other direct costs are participant support cost, research support compensations. Publications. consultant services and things like computer service center charges. Different things like that. So this is not a complete list. So just be aware, these are just some common things that are out there.

Michelle Hendrickson: Okay. So we go into personnel salaries, wages and benefits. So that’s the 1st one we’re going to talk about. Salaries are broken down into different categories. So if you’re on a 12 month appointment, we consider that the calendar year. It’s going to be the whole 12 months. Academic years, the 9 months, and then the summer term is anywhere from one to 3 months that you could claim. You know you want summer months, but you’re on an academic appointment. You can pay yourself extra.

Michelle Hendrickson: I don’t say extra, but during the summer months, while you’re doing your project or research, you can claim that some agencies do have restrictions of, or suggestions of how many months you can be paid during the summer. So you do want to watch for that and again work with your Grant administrator. We have access to Workday to finding everybody that’s on your team or on your budget.

Michelle Hendrickson: We’re pulling that payroll information, and you know different things like that from Workday to gather that information to put it on that WSU template for you. And some sponsors may impose a salary cap as well, as well as limiting the month. So just be aware of that. So I like to discuss course buy out a little bit.

Michelle Hendrickson: Every department is different. So through the College of Arts and Science, we actually, it has to be approved by the chair. We have to have internal we have to have written approval that we attach to the eREX so that your chair is aware that you’re buying out your course. We prepare how it’s calculated. So we know. and every college or department may be different. But through College of Arts and science have a calculation of how we do the course buyout.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then it usually shows up on your budget through salaries and benefits. So that’s how it’s reflected. So when you put it into your actual proposal, it’ll be some kind of effort of yours because you’re buying out that time that you had for teaching.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then the next category, you know, talking about wages and salaries. The grad student rates. So grad students have unionized. There’s all kinds of rates that we have to abide by now. So this is just a little snapshot out of the unions documents showing, you know, if they’re a master’s program they would be at step 59 if they’re admitted to a doctoral program, they’d be at 64.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then a doctoral candidate is at step 69 for the Pullman location. So they’re different locations different rates. And currently, you know, everything’s still in limbo because they’re trying to finalize all these documents and rates and everything like that. So these are the suggested ones that we currently are going by.

Michelle Hendrickson: So I also want to touch base on. It’s called Washington State Department of Labor and Industries. They have changes to overtime rules. So this is more when I’m mentioning this, we’re talking more about a postdoc rate. So again, each college or department may be different about what they suggest. But the State of Washington did put in overtime eligible, you know, rules.

Michelle Hendrickson: And so I’ll skip ahead here. Just kind of showing you. This is from their labor and industries website. So in January 1 of 2025, from January to December, a postdoc must make this $77,968.80 to be where they can work overtime. So if you pay them less than that, there has to be restrictions on, they can work 40 hours.

Michelle Hendrickson: No more, because if they actually claim the time, it’ll break your budget. So I know this is a change from what we’ve seen previously, and most post docs work more than 40 hours. Right? So when we’re preparing that budget, we want to shoot for this, you know, threshold amount the Washington State suggest. It’s may not always be achievable with the amount you’re given.

Michelle Hendrickson: So then you just know that your postdoc would have to work 40, and the maximum would be 40 hours. So they’re not paid overtime. If you do less great! But you do want to work with your department and your grant administrator, determining that and having that discussion, if that comes up.

Michelle Hendrickson: To go into fringe benefits. So when we do calculations of fringe benefits. WSU on their budget template has an average benefit rate for everybody. So faculty would be 31.2. Graduate students, they’ve suggested using 16.9 during the academic year. And our department uses 12, just because the academic year seemed to go up by 2%.

Michelle Hendrickson: So we’re budgeting this extra 2%. So it used to be 10%. Now, we’re using 12% until that actually come out from the central office of what to use. So we’re basically saying, based on our knowledge, this is what we’re doing. And then the post docs on their website, or sorry. The WSU budget says 35.2. But know, every faculty member. Actually, we try to use when we’re preparing budgets actuals.

Michelle Hendrickson: So we’re going into Workday into the Workday system. And we’re running a report to find out what your average benefit rate is because we want to use those actuals. Now that we have Workday, and we can go and pull those. So every dollar of your research money can be allocated to what you are needing it for.

Michelle Hendrickson: So. And again, every PI is different. Every faculty member is different. And it’s based on what you’ve chosen for retirement. It’s based off your age and different things like that go into that calculation. So Just be aware that when everybody’s isn’t the same, there’s a reason behind it when we’re preparing that. Some faculty members. They want to go with the average on their budgets because it looks consistent.

Michelle Hendrickson: Sometimes, that’s allowed. But we try to maximize the research dollars in those budgets to be as accurate as we can.

Michelle Hendrickson: So other direct costs. I pulled this list basically off of the Federal agency. So it more mimics. What NSF is looking for. So on a budget, you know, other direct costs are considered materials and supplies, Publication costs, computer services, equipment, facility rentals, user fees and etc. So basically list the general categories of expenses in this budget.

Michelle Hendrickson: So basically want to break down each category. So like, you’re going to have your list of supplies and what falls under that? And then your publications. And then, if you have facility rentals or service center fees, you know those will go under goods and services. So under goods and services. for example, NIH doesn’t have you break down anything less than a $1,000 because, you know, if there’s a bunch of pens and notebooks and your supplies, you can just put a $1,000 supplies for, you know, and then do an explanation.

Michelle Hendrickson: But general supplies, you just don’t want to break down those piddly things. Yeah, so and don’t forget when you’re doing those goods and services on your budget. You want to include in the cost of that goods and service, the shipping and tax, that’s all one cost for that item. So we do want to include that.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then also equipment ordered from an off-campus supplier. Oh, let’s see, don’t forget Taxes. Not sure what that was about. Sorry.

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: Michelle? Can I ask a question?

Michelle Hendrickson: Sure. WWhen

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: we’re doing those expenses. What about inflation?

Michelle Hendrickson: Yeah. So every year WSU, allows 4%. So the next year will be 4% increase on those unless you’re getting quotes for something, then you know the exact price. But if you’re saying, but if you’re having consistent, you know lab supplies, and then the next year we’ll just add 4% in the WSU template budget so that we do prepare for things like that.

Michelle Hendrickson: Let’s see, travel. Travel is important one especially with Federal agencies like NSF, you do want to break down the actual details. You don’t just say $5,000, for, you know, traveling to DC The Federal agencies want to know how many days are you there? What’s the per diem rate you’re using, you know, different things like that.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then they want to know dates, locations. If you don’t know that it’s great, you can just say to be determined or based off previous travel. But it is important to break down the cost, and we have per diem mileage rates. Different things like that. There’s this – This is just an example. But WSU has a per diem rate.

Michelle Hendrickson: But there is an international one, and there is also a US based one. So you can go pull up different states and cities to see what the per diem rate in those areas are. To put those. You know, you’re going to a conference. Let’s say, Ohio, you go pull that location and it actually will show you those different rates for the time of year.

Michelle Hendrickson: You’re gonna go. So it is important to use the tools that are available in our travel, you know, on WSU travel has links to there. But using those to calculate what you’re using for travel.

Michelle Hendrickson: Equipment. So equipment is defined as an item of property that has been acquisition cost of $5,000 or more. So you can’t break that up. If you’re buying 2 pieces that equal one piece of equipment, you know, it’s gonna be that piece of equipment. So anything, $5,000 or over and so we want to follow these rules of what the equipment is actually at WSU.

Michelle Hendrickson: SSo you know, expects, and the sorry more, and an expected service life of more than one year. So general purpose, equipment, such as vehicles, is not eligible for support. You know there’s different things that you have to be careful about when doing purchasing. List each item of equipment separately and its costs briefly describe its purpose. These are more of when you’re doing your budget justification or in the budget itself.

Michelle Hendrickson: It’s knowing what piece of equipment you’re buying. and then tips are. Don’t forget to budget the necessary maintenance. So a lot of big equipment is purchased, but it’ll maybe have a yearly maintenance fee from the vendor, you know, of $60,000 or something like that. You have to make sure you budget for those repairs and different things to keep the upkeep of the equipment going.

Michelle Hendrickson: Purchase near the beginning of your project. Most Federal agencies will say, you know, it’s part of the uniform guidance. They don’t want you buying equipment the last year typically of a project, because doing your project, you want to usually have the equipment ahead of time unless there’s some specific reason why you’re doing that. But also with the College of Arts and Science we mentioned to our faculty member. Excuse me, if your equipment’s coming from out of the country. There are additional inspection fees.

Michelle Hendrickson: So be aware of that, you know, and to make sure that you’re letting your college or department know if there’s can it go up your elevator, or do we have to move walls for your equipment like, how big is this equipment? Is there, you know, facilities that have to be involved for your heating and cooling is so think about those things, and let the proper people in your department or college know at the pre award stage, because we don’t want you at award stage.

Michelle Hendrickson: And then, like it’s not going to fit up the elevator, or we actually have to tear down a wall. So just be aware of those things.

Becky James: The other thing, perhaps to mention Michelle is that a lot of times, especially when it’s equipment that it gets sent to central, and they charge to bring it to the department. So you’ll want to account for that as well. If it’s a large piece of equipment.

Michelle Hendrickson: Yeah, the facilities to take it from Dairy Road, or wherever the location is that they receive them. If they actually have to take it to your lab. There will be at a charge to your department which should come out of this budget that you’re preparing, you know, to have it delivered. Thank you, Becky.

Michelle Hendrickson: Okay, so participant, sub Participant training support cost, so they call it participant support cost. So this is a very protective category. So once you put something in this category like with NSF, you’re only allowed to use it in that category, it cannot be used. It can’t be flexed into another category is very protected in this category.

Michelle Hendrickson: And when we do have protect so excuse me, participant support cost. we wanna make sure that they are truly participants. So they are not WSU employees. They are truly there for a training opportunity. Those kinds of things. So we really need to be careful when putting in this budget category because it is protected.

Michelle Hendrickson: And we the central office also will question, is this truly, you know a training or a workshop or conference. But if you are part of a WSU and you are employed, and you’re thinking you’re going to pay yourself a participant support. You know that that’s not going to happen because there are rules behind it.

Michelle Hendrickson: So we want to be careful of that. So and then when you get down into doing your budget justification to other different things, you want to itemize those dollar amounts out and participant support is also broke down into different categories. They could be stipend, scholarship, tuition, travel, housing different things like that. So we want to make sure we’re following all those rules on

Michelle Hendrickson: participant support cost. Okay? Then the next category would be sub awards versus you know, personal service contracts. So I took this snapshot, put it in there because it’s very helpful. it’s from an older training. But it basically shows you what a sub award is which they call sub award/sub recipients in the snapshot.

Michelle Hendrickson: But basically, knowing a sub award difference between a vendor, so a vendor would be providing a service available to all kinds of people, you know. operates in a competitive environment. So a lot of service centers are more of a vendor, you know, depending how we use them. If they’re running lab samples and different things, they’re more of a vendor.

Michelle Hendrickson: A sub award or sub recipient carries out an actual scope of work. They’re a Co-PI, they perform performance measured with meetings and objectives authorized for administrative decisions. So it is based on that. The role they’re taking on your projects. So you want to definitely make sure that, you know, are they more of the vendor then you want to be.

Michelle Hendrickson: Go, you know, personal service agreement that goes through our purchasing department? Or are they a sub award? And we need to set up contracts for them. So it is based on that important role and relationship they’re having on your project. Again, going more into the consultant services. So basically, the consultant or personal service agreement is more of, you know, they provide service out there to everyone and they also don’t hold a co-PI.

Michelle Hendrickson: So this has come up multiple times where somebody wants to pay another faculty a consultant fee. Right? And they end up being co-PI, they that it needs to go through their university. It has to be a sub-award. So we just want to make sure that we’re understanding the true definition of consultant or personal service agreement versus a sub award and the sub-award.

Michelle Hendrickson: You know, a sub awards is needed when WSU department or principal investigator, would like to collaborate with a colleague at a different entity to complete the goals of your project. So they have roles and responsibilities and scope of work within a budget. I wanted to mention, you know, so sub awards. They have their direct costs and their indirect cost.

Michelle Hendrickson: And that total together is the sub-awards budget, and that goes into your budget as a direct cost. WSU gets to claim currently 25% or sorry $25,000 of the first. So say you have a sub award to U of I. And it’s for $50,000. So we would claim indirects on that 1st $25,000, and after that we would exclude the other $25,000 from our indirect cost calculation.

Michelle Hendrickson: So it gets complicated. But that’s why your Grant administrator there is to there to support you and help you through that of doing that calculation on the WSU budget. And like, I said, currently, it’s 25,000 cause that’s going to change as soon as we, the uniform guidance has already changed. But that change is coming soon. So it’s going to go up to $50,000.

Michelle Hendrickson: So just be aware.

Michelle Hendrickson: just know when you do have a sub award here at WSU. your grant administrator needs to reach out to them. Send an email requesting certain items. So it’s always good to have official email from your Grant administrator stating, you know. These are the items we need. And by this date, you know. So here’s the common list that I use. As you know, statement of work or scope of work.

Michelle Hendrickson: Their senior personnel documents. a letter of commitment. Now, so the letter of commitment. It’s very important that that faculty understand this is signed by their authorized institutional official. This is not a letter from the PI. This is a letter from that other institution saying they’re aware they’re going to be collaborating on this proposal.

Michelle Hendrickson: But there’s a letter of collaboration is totally different. But this is a letter of commitment needed, signed by would be like Dan Norquist or Matt Michener equivalent of that signature. And so, and then a budget and a budget justification. our F&A rate agreements or indirect rate agreement. These asterisk items here that I have on this screen these things. If they’re found on this Federal clearing house, then we won’t request those items, because. like with WSU, we’re on the Federal Clearinghouse, and all those things are out there on that website for other Grant administrators to find.

Michelle Hendrickson: But if they’re not on the Federal Clearinghouse, we will ask for their indirect, and then these other asterisk items, are financial conflict of interest. The RCR form that also has. And we have another financial document that also requires us to fill out and their W9. And it’s really important we get those W9, so we can set them up as vendors for payment in the WSU system.

Michelle Hendrickson: Right? So we want to make sure that we have all the proper documents. So when the award comes in, we can actually transfer those funds and get the funds going to those sub awards at the time. So note, there is a lot of things that you need to involve your Grant administrators so they can reach out and ask for these items.

Becky James: Well, I get to talk about F&A. Everybody’s favorite subject. So the slide here is actually yeah, you can go. Yeah, sorry. I actually don’t know which slides are coming up. But it. It’s kind of a little tongue in cheek. Do you like the lights on in your lap? But it’s also fairly literal, because indirect costs are what keeps the university going.

Becky James: And so my message, not just today. But it’s kind of like I’m trying to shout it from the rooftops. Indirect costs are actually a good thing. So many PIs really are, get quite unhappy in some cases about indirect costs being added on to their Grant proposals. But you know that the idea that the it keeps your lights on is absolutely true.

Becky James: Because what happened indirect costs are what and these generally are applied to Federal grants. But it’s what the Federal government pays us to do the research for them. If you think about, you know going back to the Manhattan Project you know that big money model. It kind of created that situation in which universities or, you know, like they’re creating projects that they pay for the research to be done.

Becky James: And that, you know, it’s very much a vestige of the Cold War even after that. So yeah, they pay it. We negotiate, as Michelle said. We negotiate with the Federal government. So they know what those rates are going to be. They allow that we basically put together a whole list of things that we’re paying for out of indirect.

Becky James: And we pay for it up front. We get reimbursed out of the indirect cost portion of the grants as they are, or as your other costs are expended. So what does F&A pay for? F&A pays for libraries. If you use the library ever that is all F&A money for all those subscriptions to the journals that we use, and we have easy access to from our desktop.

Becky James: TThank F&A, because that’s the only thing that keeps those going. They do not have a budget otherwise for those it does pay for the heating in our offices and labs and common areas, the plumbing, the electricity, all of that sort of stuff. F&A pays for internal funding programs can’t be 100% sure, but I think the new faculty Seed Grants maybe come from that.

Becky James: Although I don’t quote me on that. But there are other internal funding programs which are supported by F&A dollars. Pays for cost, share, obligate? Oh, I should talk about cost, share pays for cost, share obligations as well when those are mandated, and we only want to pay those when they’re mandated. I’ll come back to that a little bit.

Becky James: Sometimes it pays for graduate students. Sometimes it pays for administrative support. Sometimes it pays for various things in your department, and that can vary quite considerably. And the alternative to having this percentage attached to your to your research project costs is to do what’s called a fully burdened budget, and that means where we account for everything.

Becky James: So we would have to have like meters on your labs and offices. How much computer time are you using? How much electricity are you using? If you’re in a lab that needs a special air circulation ventilation. We’d have to account for the exact cost of that. And I can tell you, that would be a lot more expensive than 53% for many, many people.

Becky James: So it actually is a good thing. We’re getting funding reimbursed to us for the cost that we’ve already paid for that and, as I said, it supports a lot of activities across campus. and that I should also add that the office of research does have an entire page devoted to explaining F&A. It’s pretty text heavy, though, I warn you.

Becky James: But there’s a little infographic on there from the oh, shoot. Do you remember who did it? Cheryl?

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: I don’t remember. Oh. I

Becky James: should know that! But, anyways, but it just tries to show you exactly where those costs go. It’s not my favorite infographic ever. But it is somewhat useful. The other thing that you can get from our BPPM is how cost? How indirect costs are allocated across the university.

Becky James: So most of it does go to the central office of research, and then other, you know, like the facilities and so forth, that need to be paid. But the colleges do get to keep 23% of any F&A revenue generated, and I don’t know about other colleges. But at least in the College of Arts and Sciences, college only keeps 8% of that. And 15% goes back to the department.

Becky James: And so their department has basically money to do with it what it wants. And I can’t make any promises about what departments do, because everyone is different. But there are some departments that will give some of those F&A dollars back to the PI. There are some I know. In one case there was a department that voted to pool all of their F&A dollars, and then those F&A dollars from just from that department go to support graduate students, and hire as many TAs and RAs as they can with that money.

Becky James: Yeah. And then in the college. We put that money back into faculty programs. So we have some internal funding that’s available to faculty. For instance, we have a research enhancement opportunity where we give summer support or a course release to faculty, so that they can have the time and a little. You know some of the resources to write a Major Grant proposal.

Becky James: So all comes back to faculty. So that’s really what I want you to learn about indirect costs. It’s not a punishment. It’s really not a negative thing. And it doesn’t. You know. People will say, Oh, it takes money out of out of my research program, and no, especially when we’re talking about NIH and NSF, it doesn’t because, we added.

Becky James: You make your budget. And then we add the indirect costs on top of whatever those costs are. And NSF, NIH. Again, as I said before, they know that when they set limits or parameters for the cost of a particular grant program. They know. that WSU has a 53% rate or something of that nature.

Becky James: And then there’s a few myths. a couple of other myths? Because there are some sponsors. There are some programs that limit F&A. So if you’re applying for some kind of fellowship, for example, says we will only pay 10% indirect cost rate, or they may even say, in some cases we do not pay F&A at all.

Becky James: And that’s fine you can still apply. We still want you to apply. We want you to be successful. We want you to do those projects, and if they don’t pay F&A, that’s it’s no problem you can still apply. So you’re not going to be punished for it. No one’s going to hold it against you.

Becky James: We still want you to get funded. So don’t think that I mean, because sometimes when people talk about F&A, especially when they’re saying it’s a really positive thing. It sounds like, we only want you to do the research so we can get the F&A that is not, that is, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Becky James: Some people there is a different rate for off campus work, and generally that is, for people who are in, say, biology or archeology, and they literally are doing off campus work. They’re not using campus resources. excuse me. And so that they can use that 26% off campus rate that does not apply. We’ve heard this a lot in the last 3 or 4 years.

Becky James: If you are working at home, you do not get to use the off campus rate because you’re still using university facilities. And you know the libraries and everything else that goes along with that. So that’s an absolute no, go there. And I can tell you that we do not. The other thing is. People seem to think that the university is just raking in the bucks with F&A. And

Becky James: that’s just simply not true. We don’t make millions. We actually lose money quite frankly. Everything that we get on F&A is kind of is almost icing on the cake. Because we’ve as I said. We’ve already paid for those costs. We’re just getting some of it back now. So yay, F&A. we love F&A.

Becky James: It’s a great thing. Oh. and oh, and I did mention cost share because that very often comes up in budget. So just a couple of quick things about that. 1st of all, there are a number of agencies that do not want. Well, NSF. In particular, they actually prohibit cost share. They don’t want cost share on their proposals at all.

Becky James: So there’s that but you may see others, and I think you know USDA and trying to think which other ones I’ve seen it kind of more commonly where they say, well, you can have F&A. But you don’t have to, or something we do not want you to put any kind of cost share. I think I said F&A but I meant cost share.

Becky James: We don’t want you to put any kind of cost share on your Grant proposals. And the reason for that is because they are auditable right. So if you promise cost share, then we have to track that we have to report it, and the agency has to keep track of all those reports and everything else.

Becky James: It’s a huge administrative burden. and that’s not to say you can’t get commitments and that sort of thing. We just don’t necessarily convey that to the sponsor when we’re putting in the Grant proposal. So unless we absolutely have to, unless it’s required, we really don’t want to do cost share a lot of times. People say, well, I just you know I thought cost share would make my proposal more. you know, more attractive or more competitive or something.

Becky James: And that’s just simply not true. Because not only does as I said, WSU doesn’t want to see it, and the agencies don’t particularly like it, either. Because then they have to do it. On the other hand, again, if the agency does require it, then we will work with you, and we will, you know, do what we can to help you meet those cost share obligations.

Becky James: And it doesn’t always have to be cash, either. We can do all kinds of in kind stuff. Michelle’s got this up here, you know, whether you know we can match your time or do whatever So there’s that. Okay? Oh, my gosh, we’re running out of time. We have 5 minutes

Michelle Hendrickson: Do you want to go over the budget justifications?

Becky James: Yeah, let me just talk very quickly about that. Because the budget justification is just what it says. hang on a second.

Becky James: OOh, you are explaining why this particular budget item is needed. As Michelle had pointed out, that you know everything in your budget has to be allowable, allocable and reasonable. And the budget justification is a text document. Budget obviously, is excel or other, some, you know, financial type of document. This is a text document. You’re explaining exactly why that thing is needed and how you arrived at the figure that you are requesting.

Becky James: So you want to make sure that everything that’s in the narrative of the proposal is accounted for in the budget, or all the costs, anyway, and that everything that’s in the budget is accounted for in the narrative materials and supplies. Maybe those, you know don’t need to be laid out so much in the narrative.

Becky James: But if you’re talking, you know, if you’re budgeting for I don’t know a focus group, and you haven’t talked about focus groups in your methodology section that’s going to be a problem when it comes to the proposal review. So you want to kind of do a crosswalk at some point and make sure that everything matches up there and do explain it in the same order that it appears on the budget sheet for the sponsor. And probably

Becky James: I would say the 2 most problematic things in the budget justification are the salaries and the travel because with the salaries you have to explain exactly. You know what the salary is, plus, you have to add on to the benefit rates. And then what is that total And you have to? As Michelle indicated, you cannot pay yourself more than what your normal FTE

Becky James: scale is. So you have to be very precise about that. That’s your justification. That’s your normal salary, right? And then your benefit rates are also standardized. But then it comes to like hourly employees. If you’re hiring a student, for instance, you do have to account, you know. What are you going to pay them?

Becky James: And you can say that you know you’re paying them the state minimum wage. That’s fine for justification. You can pay them more than that obviously. But you also. How many hours, how many weeks or months are they, you know, and what does that total out to for the project here? And then for each one of those people, what’s each person contributing the PI is going to direct the program. He’s going to supervise the graduate students.

Becky James: She’s going to supervise the lab activities, whatever it is. Maybe the graduate students are responsible for supervising undergraduates and who’s responsible for running the assays? All that kind of stuff. So it doesn’t have to be long. But you just have to prove that that position that you’re asking for is reasonable, allocable, and allowable. and then travel You just need to account for the destination and duration as well as the purpose.

Becky James: And use GSA rates. So you just say I, you know, for you know you’re going to I don’t know Bangor, Maine. The GSA rate for lodging and per diem in Bangor, Maine is XYZ, whatever it is. and I think yeah. Michelle did point out also that we do have a standard rates for car rental and mileage reimbursements here.

Becky James: So that’s fine for justification. You can use travel websites for airline cost travelocity or whatever it is. And speaking to the question of inflation, especially if that travel is a couple of years, you know, down the road you might want to count a little bit for that. What else? What else about travel? Oh, oh, I know what it was.

Becky James: Sometimes, you may not know where a particular conference is, say, 2 years down the road, or something what we recommend is just saying it’s going to be in Washington, DC. Budget for Washington, DC. That will generally cover your costs for almost anywhere else in the country. As long as it’s domestic and not international. And you know, if you over budget a little, that’s fine.

Becky James: We can move that money around at the end. But yeah, just you can’t just say we’re asking $5,000 for travel. Want to know where you’re going, why you’re going there, how long you’re going to be gone. So I think that’s I need to stop there because we’re at the end. But I can hang on for a minute if people have questions.

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: hanks very much, Michelle and Becky. I think you covered a lot there and provided a lot of information.

Becky James: So everybody’s an expert on budgets now.

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: So I think the biggest takeaway is reach out to your grants administrator/your research administrator, to talk to them about getting through the budget and make sure you’re reading your call for proposals to know the limits.

Becky James: Start early on your budget. And start early.

Becky James: Well, thanks.

Cheryl Dykstra-Aiello: All right. Well. thank you very much for presenting the information, and thank you everyone for attending, and we will let you know when the recording is up on the site and send out the PowerPoint. Thanks.

Michelle Hendrickson: Alright. Thank you.

Becky James: Bye bye.