The budget consists of direct and indirect (F&A) costs. If you have not sought sponsored funding before, you can request a sample budget and advice from the Office of Research Administration (ORA). Budgets should reflect realistic anticipated costs of the project. Funding agencies, particularly NIH and NSF, generally understand the costs of research. Overestimates or underestimates do not reflect well on the entire application.
Budget Calculation Worksheets
These worksheets are designed to help with your budget calculations. Included in the document is the person-months conversion chart to convert percent effort to calendar months.
Direct Costs
Direct costs are costs that can be identified and charged to a specific sponsored project. These costs include salaries, employee benefits, supplies and materials, and equipment. Department managers or the ORA can be very helpful in providing accurate figures for salaries and benefits. For animal care and other core facilities, contact the Division of Laboratory Animal Medicine (DLAM) or the core facility director to obtain current rates for services. Sales representatives can also be helpful in determining supply budgets.
Personnel Costs
Salaries: Multi-year proposals should include an annual percentage increase. The current annual salary escalator is 3%.Fringe Benefits: Fringe benefits should be calculated for all Tufts participants on the project. Different rates apply for academic year and summer effort. Current rates can be found here.
- Faculty Academic Year Salary: Contact your department chair to determine the percentage of faculty time that can be spent on Tufts-related sponsored research without arranging release time.
- Faculty Summer Salary Supplement: Tufts allows a maximum of three months or (33%) of academic year salary. Most agencies allow three months as well. Exception: NSF uses two-ninths of academic year salary. NSF allows principal investigators to work on non-NSF supported grants for the third summer month.
- Research faculty/staff are hired on a 12-month calendar year basis and are thus entitled to request full-year salary from the agency. However, many at Tufts charge portions of their salary to various grants that they are working on.
- Graduate Student Stipends: For current rates consult your department chair or manager. Stipend level should not exceed the TA (Teaching Assistant) stipend in your department. For summer work:
- Take the nine month TA stipend for your department for the academic year prior to the summer in question.
- For two months full-time research assistance: multiply the nine-month figure by 2/9.
- For three months full-time research assistance: multiply the nine-month figure by 3/9.
Other Direct Costs include:
- Equipment: Permanent equipment is any article of nonexpendable tangible property having a useful life of more than two years and an acquisition cost of $5,000 or more per unit.
- Travel: Includes transportation, per diem, and meeting registration costs.
- Materials, Supplies and Consumables
- Publication and Documentation Dissemination
- Animal Care Per Diem Expenses (Contact the IACUC for your campus)
- Consultants: Consultants are paid a consulting fee plus travel expenses. Refer to the agency's program literature to determine the allowability of and rates for consultants. Tufts faculty and staff cannot be reimbursed for consulting within the Tufts community.
Facility and Administration (F&A) Costs
Also known as Indirect Costs. Per OMB Circular A-21, costs incurred for common or joint objectives which cannot be identified readily and specifically with a particular sponsored project, instructional activity or other institutional activity, should be treated as F&A costs. Facility costs and departmental administration are examples of expenses that should be treated as F&A costs. At Tufts, the F&A costs cover expenses for maintaining buildings, utilities and administration which are shared across the University. These rates vary by campus and by location within campus. They are expressed as a rate - that is, a percentage of the direct costs of a project that must be added as F&A costs. For example, if the direct costs of a project were $100,000, and the F&A rate was 65%, you would show $65,000 in F&A costs in your budget.
Tufts current facilities and administration (F&A) rates are available here. These rates are reviewed and updated on a fiscal year basis. Rates are available for future years for budgeting purposes but are subject to revision; your budget will require updating when those rates are revised.