University of Missouri - Kansas City

Personnel: Includes salaries & wages and fringe benefits.

• For UMKC grants, only current or future UMKC employees can be personnel.
• The funding for personnel should be proportional to the effort.
• Note and explain part-time personnel.
• Include 4% annual future increases.
• When figuring salaries, use percent of effort, not hourly wages.
  Fringe benefits (UMKC rates)
• Full-time personnel-35%
  Part-time personnel (less than 75% FTE)-8%
  Students, including graduate students-4%
• It will depend on the application how you show your fringe rates. In many agency's applications (NIH's, NSF's, American Heart, etc...), the fringe rates are their own lines in the proposal budget forms. If an agency application does not have a separate line for fringe benefits, it will probably ask for "personnel costs" and in that case, the agency wants salary, wages & benefits added together.

Consultants

• Consultants are individuals hired to give professional advice or services for a fee. Consultants are not companies or other institutions.
• Check to ensure your funding agency does not cap consultant costs (NSF does).
• Consultants' fees are generally determined by the number of days or hours of consultant time provided.
• They are considered independent contractors. (For example, if you are working with a professor from another university who plans to work as a consultant on your grant, you do not need a subcontract. In those cases, the other university's employee is not utilizing his/her university's facilities or administrative services. However, if you plan to collaborate with a professor from another university, and that collaboration will include utilizing the other university's facilities and administrative facilities, you will need to complete a subcontract rather than a consulting agreement.)
• A letter agreement outlines scope of involvement & method of compensation for each consultant. (Usually, the letter must be included the proposal.)
  
  When including consultants in your budget
• Include their names & affiliations
• Include frequency of consultations & rates
• Include their travel and per diem in your estimates for consultant costs
• Justify necessity and reasonableness in your budget justification

If your grant is awarded, you will need to complete a university consulting agreement. This document is signed by you, the consultant, and a university official (Colin Gage, Director of Business Services)

Travel

• Itemize travel in your budget (domestic & foreign)
• Include purpose and destination.
• Highlight relevance to project in your justification.
• Do NOT include patient or consultant travel in this category.
• If travel is sponsored by federal funding, you must use a US carrier for air travel.
• If foreign travel is sponsored by federal funding, federal international per diem rates should be used.
• When considering travel costs, think about including conference travel to disseminate information gleaned from your project, not just the travel costs to do the actual research. Many grants will allow these expenses.

Alterations & Renovations

• Include if they are allowed by agency and if they are essential to project.
• May include repairs, painting, or installation of equipment (Depending on the extent of the repairs or installations, these might be considered "other." Talk to ORS staff for clarification.
• Provide square footage and costs, if applicable.
• These guidelines do not apply for facility grants.
• Alteration & renovation costs are excluded from the total direct costs when figuring F&A costs (indirect costs).

Participant Costs

• Participant costs are direct costs associated with workshop, conference, or training participants. For example, if your project includes a conference or a workshop, you may include participant costs (transportation, per diem, conference publications, other related costs, etc...) in your budget.
• Be sure to justify your participant costs and include the number of participants you plan to accommodate.
• Participant costs are not the same thing as employee costs. Do not include costs (intramural personnel meals, coffee breaks, etc...) for employees of UMKC.
• Once awarded, you will not be able to rebudget participant costs. For example, if, once the grant is awarded, you find that you will have 30 participants rather than the 50 you budgeted for. Most likely, you will not be able to move the expenses associated with the extra 20 participants into another budget category. You will simply not receive those funds.
• Participant costs are sometimes excluded from the total direct costs when figuring F&A costs (indirect costs).

Patient Care

• Includes direct care to patients (inpatient or outpatient).
• Be sure to specify the rates used.
• Quantify patient accrual.
• Do NOT include travel reimbursement or incentives in this category (they go in "other").
• If your project will generate income, either from patients or from reimbursement, talk to your fiscal officer and/or ORS staff members for clarification.
• Patient Care costs are usually excluded from the total direct costs when figuring F&A costs (indirect costs). If you have questions, talk to your fiscal officer or ORS staff members.

Other

• "Other" is non-tangible, non-stuff.
• Another definition of "other" costs: you can't see it, you can't touch it, you can't store it, but you need it.
• Examples: postage, phone/fax charges, rental, shop charges, animal per diem (although actual animals are considered supplies), publications & page charges, patient incentives & travel reimbursement, maintenance agreements for equipment, computer charges, photocopying, purchased services, etc.
  
  Purchased Services:
• You can purchase a service from an individual, institution or company.
• A purchased service is a routine service for a fee.
• The fee is generally determined on a unit basis.
• A purchase order is usually used, and it generally outlines the services to be performed.
• A purchased service is NOT substantive programmatic work, i.e., the work is not contributing to the project in a scholarly, scientific manner. (If the service is substantive programmatic work, it should be listed under subcontracts or consultants

Subcontracts

• You subcontract work when the agency or individual will have substantive (scholarly) program involvement.
• Subcontracts are institutional collaborations.
• In subcontracts, you name the contact personnel.
• Subcontracts include a budget (usually they are cost-based, but they are sometimes fixed budgets).
• A subcontract is a formal agreement.An amount (the first $25,000) of subcontract costs are included when figuring F&A (indirect costs).
  • F&A costs are figured on the first $25,000 of a subcontract. Do not charge F&A costs to the rest of the subcontract (in excess of $25,000). For example: You have a subcontract for 3 years, and for each year, the subcontract will be for $30,000 ($90,000 total). When calculating F&A, you will charge F&A on the first $25,000 (from the first year), but you will NOT charge F&A on the remaining $65,000 (for years 2 & 3).
  • Similarly, if you have 2 subcontracts on a grant, and each subcontract is for 20,000 for 3 years, you would figure F&A costs on the first $25,000 for each subcontract. Therefore, for year 1, you would figure F&A on the total costs for each subcontract, for year 2, you would figure F&A on only $5,000 of the total costs for each subcontract, and for year 3, you would not figure F&A on any of the total costs for each subcontract.
• UMKC's F&A rates do not effect the F&A rates of subcontracting organizations. F&A rates are federally negotiated rates that are not dependent on other organizations.

• For example, let's say that UMKC is the lead institution on a grant and we're ubcontracting to University of Michigan. The subcontract will be for one year. We have an F&A rate of 47% for on-campus research. University of Michigan has an F&A rate of 51% for on-campus federal research. They can still charge full-indirect rates for their subcontracted work.

So, Michigan's budget calculations would look something like this:

Personnel	$20,000
Supplies	$10,000
Total direct costs	$30,000	(for their personnel & supplies)
F&A costs	$15,300	(calculated at 51%)
Total costs	$45,300

And our budget calculations would look something like this: