1. GENERAL INFORMATION

 One of the most important elements of the proposal is the budget.  Many agencies review budgets separately from the proposal so it is recommended that any text regarding funds (especially specific dollar amounts) remain in the budget and budget justification.  Budgets should be done in accordance with the sponsor’s specific guidelines. 

 The following are some general guidelines to follow when constructing your budget.  When constructing the budget, you should show how you calculated your figures for every item presented. 

 SENIOR/KEY PERSONNEL.  The first main section of the budget is key personnel.  This section is for Oakland University personnel only unless sponsor guidelines direct otherwise explicitly in the application instructions.  Senior personnel should be listed in order of project commitment with principal investigator listed first.  Any other proposed staff should be under a subcategory called other personnel or consultants (if they are consultants).  For OU personnel, provide the name and job title.  Complete either the academic and summer term commitment or the calendar year commitment.  Faculty at Oakland work an eight-month period during the academic term and a four-month summer term.  This period is the basis of a commitment and should be disclosed in the budget justification.  University costing guidelines require that no more than the base salary for a comparable period of time be used to apportion costs to sponsored agreements.  Grant Officers verify the amounts apportioned as salary under sponsored agreements and are available to provide costing assistance. 

 Time should be expressed as percent of effort or person months (not exceeding 100% or 8.0 academic, 4.0 summer).  The university will only provide estimated hours if it is required in the proposal costing instructions since faculty are not hourly employees and hours are not the basis of university costing for faculty effort.  When converting salary to an hourly basis, use 2,080 (8 months x 173.33 hours/month + 4 months x 173.33 hours/month = 2,079.96) as base hours for conversion.  Faculty are considered paid an annual salary, so any summer term costs of service should use the academic salary and the base of 2,080 multiplied by the number of hours anticipated to work during any summer term period. 

SUMMER EFFORT.  Faculty can apportion up to 45% of academic salary for full summer effort (May 1 – August 31) performed during this period for all activity including research and teaching.  The 45% limit applies during any period of the summer and converts to a limit of approximately 3% per week.  The National Science Foundation (NSF) limits summer salary to no more than 2/9^th’s of the faculty member’s regular academic year salary.  This limit applies to all agreements paid by NSF during the year of award for any calendar period and applies to each month of pay.  Faculty charging a sponsor less than the full rate for a comparable period during the summer term will be considered to render voluntary uncommitted cost share as the institution is not contractually obligated to pay any salary differential during a summer term. 

OTHER PERSONNEL.  Describe the activity associated with each class of employment listed in your proposal.  Administrative and clerical effort will normally be apportioned to indirect (F&A) costs.  The direct charging of these costs may be appropriate where the nature of the work performed under a particular project requires an extensive amount of administrative or clerical support that is significantly greater or very different than the level of such services normally provided by academic departments at Oakland University.  In order to include these costs as direct, a justification of the different nature of the activity must be provided with a detailed explanation of the activity.  A portion of administrative and clerical effort will be allocated as a direct charge if the justification supports this treatment. Salary allocations above the base amount normally earned during the period will not be permitted. 

FRINGE BENEFITS.  Fringes must be calculated on all university personnel.  Oakland University uses federally approved fringe benefit rate for two types of employees only; full-time and part-time.  All employment classes should be allocated fringe rates according to these categories.  If the employee is normally employed full-time, use the full-time rate; otherwise, use the part-time rate.  Use the part-time rate to cost faculty summer term fringe benefits.  The fringe benefit rates change at the beginning of each fiscal year July 1^st).  Fringe benefits include health insurance, retirement, unemployment, and social security.

GRADUATE RESEARCH ASSISTANTS.  Graduate Assistant stipend guidelines are accessible on pages 4 and 5 of the Graduate AssistanceshipGuidelines.  Tuition remission for 2010-2011 is currently $540.50 per graduate credit hour times the number of credits.  For continually updated information, you should verify the most recent guidelines on the following websites:

• Graduate Assistanceship Guidelines
  
  
• Tuition Rates
  

TRAVEL COSTS.  The type of travel should be explicitly stated in the budget along with a brief description of connection to the project.  Each assumption for travel should be detailed in the budget, such as estimated airfare, lodging for the locality if known, ground transportation, and per diem allowance.  Local travel is currently reimbursed at $0.50 per mile and the daily maximum per travel reimbursement for meals and incidentals is $42.00/day. 

The Federal rates for common localities may be accessed at Per Diem Rates Look-Up.  Estimates should not exceed the search engine FTR rates where provided for lodging or the current maximum Oakland University daily reimbursement rate for meals and incidentals, i.e., Anaheim CA maximum daily proposed costs for May 2011 would be $165 ($123 lodging/night and $42/per diem for meals and incidentals). 

PARTICIPANT SUPPORT.  Proposal costs should be very specific in this category.  Itemize as much as possible.  Costs of memberships in social organizations are unallowable.  Professional memberships for participants may be included only if a requisite part of the program and adequately justified. 

OTHER DIRECT COSTS.  Costs of research supplies directly related to the project should be itemized here and the planned use should be described.  If costs for postage, photocopying, telephone, and general supplies are expected to be incurred, these should only be included in a budget for a project where such activities require an unusual amount and bear a direct relationship to the research being conducted, i.e., survey production, phone calls, mailing and tabulation. 

SUBAWARDEE COSTS.  Each subawardee or subcontractor must provide its own detailed budget and budget justification, so you should permit time to obtain information from collaborators.  Collaborators will need to provide an institutionally approved letter of commitment, key personnel CV’s or resumes, budget with justification and federal rate agreement.  International collaborators will be limited to a maximum of 10% of proposed cost as F&A reimbursement. 

2. BUDGET JUSTIFICATIONS

Budget justifications or budget narratives are the storytelling pieces of budgets.  They explain the budget in paragraph form.  It is imperative to explain as much as possible.  The justification should be a line-by-line explanation of each piece of the budget.  Nothing should be without an explanation.  The budget justification should lead to answers, not more questions.  If a sponsor has questions regarding the budget, the narrative should be adequate enough to explain or answer those questions.

 REMEMBER:  Each subawardee or subcontractor must provide its own detailed budget and budget justification.

 Click here to view an example of a completed budget worksheet and narrative justification.