Sample Budget Justification for 3-Year Proposal
Sample NSF Budget Justification – 3 PAGE LIMIT unless otherwise specified in the call
NOTE YOU WILL NEED TO FILL IN THE APPROPRIATE RATES AND OTHER INFORMATION BASED ON YOUR BUDGET AND PROPOSAL PERIOD
A. Senior Personnel
There is one Principle Investigator and one (Co-PI, Senior Investigator, etc.) on this project:
FirstName LastName, Assistant Professor, will be the principal investigator and will lead the research. Dr. (LastName) will have primary responsibility for the project and the submission of reports. We are requesting N (calendar, academic, summer) months of support for Dr. (LastName) annually or identify the support requested by budget period: e.g. Year 1 0.5 summer months, Year 2 1.0 summer months, etc.)
FirstName LastName, Associate Professor, will serve as co- PI and will ….. We are requesting N (calendar, academic, summer) months of support for Dr. (LastName) annually or identify the support requested by budget period: e.g. Year 1 0.5 summer months, Year 2 1.0 summer months, etc.)
B. Other Personnel
List all other personnel here – follow the sample above for formatting
All salaries are inflated at a rate of N % per year for years two and three
C. Fringe Benefits – Include benefit rates for all categories of personnel above
Faculty and staff fringe benefits are calculated at a rate of N % of salary. Health insurance (estimated mm/dd/yy rate $XX/yr.) is included based on effort and charged on calendar and academic month effort only (If applicable include: therefore no health insurance costs are requested for Dr. X’s summer effort.) Post-Doctoral Research Associate fringe benefits are calculated at a rate of N% of salary plus the cost of health insurance (estimated mm/dd/yy rate $N/yr.) based on effort allocated to the project. Graduate student research assistant rates include health insurance only at a rate of $N (estimated mm/dd/yy rate) per student per year. All fringe benefits are escalated N % after year one.
Equipment (include information for EACH piece of equipment.)
Support is requested for the purchase of ________ in the ____ year of the project It has an estimated cost of $______. Detail how the equipment will be used and why it is necessary for this project
Travel
$_____ per year is required for domestic travel and $ _____ international travel to technical conferences to present the results of our research (include any other reason for support of travel- e.g. workshops, collaboration, PI Meetings, etc). Conferences that may be attended include
LIST ALL CONFERENCES THAT YOU MAY ATTEND Travel lines are inflated by N4% in years #-#.
G. Other Direct Costs
G.1 Materials and Supplies: (indicated $$$ by project period) is requested for the purchase of supplies. Detail what will be purchased and why it is necessary for this project. No routine office supplies are charged to sponsored research projects.
G.4 Computer Services: The Department of Computer Science distributes the cost of maintaining its shared computing infrastructure among all users through its Computer Services Recharge Center. The University reviews this Recharge Center each year to ensure that it is in compliance with all applicable federal and state regulations, including OMB Circulars A-21 and A-110, as well as the Federal Cost Accounting Standards. Rates are adjusted annually to ensure that the Recharge Center is operating on a strict cost recovery basis. This Recharge Center is subject to, and has passed, both federal and state audits. All records are available for review by authorized federal and state representatives. The rate is $535 per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) per month. Rates apply to each user and are charged according to salary distribution, e.g., if a person works 50% on one project and 50% on another during the month, each project pays 50% of the fee for that month. All employees and students are assessed the same rate without regard to their salary source (federal, state, foundation, commercial). Undergraduate students working on research projects are typically not heavy users of CSRC services. Their fee will vary from 5-25% of the full fee, depending upon the number of hours worked, e.g., a student working 40 hours/week would pay 25% of the full fee and a student working 10 hours/week would pay 6.25% of the full fee. This fee will be paid from the contract or grant that supports the student. No additional fees are charged, and all services included within the Recharge Center are available to all users. The Department’s computing environment includes more than 680 computers integrated by means of high-speed networks, including an integrated voice/data switch and video switches. E-mail, internet access, routine backups, a host of personal productivity and development software, the services of the TSC (Technical Support Center) Help Desk, UNIX System Administration, PC (Windows and NT) and Macintosh System Administration and the labor for most hardware repair are examples of the available services.
G.6 Other: Graduate Student Tuition: All supported graduate students at UNC-Chapel Hill have their in-state tuition paid by the source of their support, e.g., federal grant, state teaching assistant funds, fellowship grant. These numbers are estimates as tuition charges are set by the North Carolina Legislature annually: $N (estimate) for academic year 20YY-YY; $N (estimate) for academic year 20YY-YY and $N (estimate) for academic year 20YY-YY.
Facilities & Administrative Costs
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an approved Facilities & Administrative (F&A) cost rate agreement providing for an F&A cost rate of 46% of MTDC. This rate is not applied to equipment over $5,000 per unit, graduate student tuition or any subcontract costs in excess of $25,000.