budget allocation in research

The Research Whisperer

Just like the thesis whisperer – but with more money, how to make a simple research budget.

A napkin diagram of the basic concepts in a project: interviews in South East Asia and trails with a Thingatron

Every research project needs a budget*.

If you are applying for funding, you must say what you are planning to spend that funding on. More than that, you need to show how spending that money will help you to answer your research question .

So, developing the budget is the perfect time to plan your project clearly . A good budget shows the assessors that you have thought about your research in detail and, if it is done well, it can serve as a great, convincing overview of the project.

Here are five steps to create a simple budget for your research project.

1. List your activities

Make a list of everything that you plan to do in the project, and who is going to do it.

Take your methodology and turn it into a step-by-step plan. Have you said that you will interview 50 people? Write it on your list.

Are you performing statistical analysis on your sample? Write it down.

Think through the implications of what you are going to do. Do you need to use a Thingatron? Note down that you will need to buy it, install it, and commission it.

What about travel? Write down each trip separately. Be specific. You can’t just go to ‘South East Asia’ to do fieldwork. You need to go to Kuala Lumpur to interview X number of people over Y weeks, then the same again for Singapore and Jakarta.

Your budget list might look like this:

I’m going to do 10 interviews in Kuala Lumpur; 10 interviews in Singapore; 10 interviews in Jakarta by me.
I’ll need teaching release for three months for fieldwork.
I’ll need Flights to KL, Singapore, Jakarta and back to Melbourne.
I’ll need Accommodation for a month in each place, plus per diem.
The transcription service will transcribe the 30 interviews.
I’ll analysis the transcribed results. (No teaching release required – I’ll do it in my meagre research time allowance.)
I’ll need a Thingatron X32C to do the trials.
Thing Inc will need to install the Thingatron. (I wonder how long that will take.)
The research assistant will do three trials a month with the Thingatron.
I’ll need to hire a research assistant (1 day per week for a year at Level B1.)
The research assistant will do the statistical analysis of the Thingatron results.
I’ll do the writing up in my research allowance time.

By the end, you should feel like you have thought through the entire project in detail. You should be able to walk someone else through the project, so grab a critical friend and read the list to them. If they ask questions, write down the answers.

This will help you to get to the level of specificity you need for the next step.

2. Check the rules again

You’ve already read the funding rules, right? If not, go and read them now – I’ll wait right here until you get back.

Once you’ve listed everything you want to do, go back and read the specific rules for budgets again. What is and isn’t allowed? The funding scheme won’t pay for equipment – you’ll need to fund your Thingatron from somewhere else. Cross it off.

Some schemes won’t fund people. Others won’t fund travel. It is important to know what you need for your project. It is just as important to know what you can include in the application that you are writing right now.

Most funding schemes won’t fund infrastructure (like building costs) and other things that aren’t directly related to the project. Some will, though. If they do, you should include overheads (i.e. the general costs that your organisation needs to keep running). This includes the cost of basics like power and lighting; desks and chairs; and cleaners and security staff. It also includes service areas like the university library. Ask your finance officer for help with this. Often, it is a percentage of the overall cost of the project.

If you are hiring people, don’t forget to use the right salary rate and include salary on-costs. These are the extra costs that an organisation has to pay for an employee, but that doesn’t appear in their pay check. This might include things like superannuation, leave loading, insurance, and payroll tax. Once again, your finance officer can help with this.

Your budget list might now look like this:

10 interviews in Kuala Lumpur; 10 interviews in Singapore; 10 interviews in Jakarta by me.
Teaching release for three months for fieldwork.
Flights to KL, Singapore, Jakarta and back to Melbourne.
Accommodation for a month in each place, plus per diem, plus travel insurance (rule 3F).
Transcription of 30 interviews, by the transcription service.
Analysis of transcribed results, by me. No teaching release required.
Purchase and install Thingatron X32C, by Thing Inc . Not allowed by rule 3C . Organise access to Thingatron via partner organistion – this is an in-kind contribution to the project.
Three trials a month with Thingatron, by research assistant.
Statistical analysis of Thingatron results, by research assistant.
Research assistant: 1 day per week for a year at Level B1, plus 25.91% salary on-costs.
Overheads at 125% of total cash request, as per rule 3H.

3. Cost each item

For each item on your list, find a reasonable cost for it . Are you going to interview the fifty people and do the statistical analysis yourself? If so, do you need time release from teaching? How much time? What is your salary for that period of time, or how much will it cost to hire a replacement? Don’t forget any hidden costs, like salary on-costs.

If you aren’t going to do the work yourself, work out how long you need a research assistant for. Be realistic. Work out what level you want to employ them at, and find out how much that costs.

How much is your Thingatron going to cost? Sometimes, you can just look that stuff up on the web. Other times, you’ll need to ring a supplier, particularly if there are delivery and installation costs.

Jump on a travel website and find reasonable costs for travel to Kuala Lumpur and the other places. Find accommodation costs for the period that you are planning to stay, and work out living expenses. Your university, or your government, may have per diem rates for travel like this.

Make a note of where you got each of your estimates from. This will be handy later, when you write the budget justification.

10 interviews in Kuala Lumpur; 10 interviews in Singapore; 10 interviews in Jakarta by me (see below for travel costs).
Teaching release for three months for fieldwork = $25,342 – advice from finance officer.
Flights to KL ($775), Singapore ($564), Jakarta ($726), Melbourne ($535) – Blue Sky airlines, return economy.
Accommodation for a month in each place (KL: $3,500; Sing: $4,245; Jak: $2,750 – long stay, three star accommodation as per TripAdviser).
Per diem for three months (60 days x $125 per day – University travel rules).
Travel insurance (rule 3F): $145 – University travel insurance calculator .
Transcription of 30 interviews, by the transcription service: 30 interviews x 60 minutes per interview x $2.75 per minute – Quote from transcription service, accented voices rate.
Analysis of transcribed results, by me. No teaching release required. (In-kind contribution of university worth $2,112 for one week of my time – advice from finance officer ).
Purchase and install Thingatron X32C, by Thing Inc . Not allowed by rule 3C. Organise access to Thingatron via partner organistion – this is an in-kind contribution to the project. ($2,435 in-kind – quote from partner organisation, at ‘favoured client’ rate.)
Research assistant: 1 day per week for a year at Level B1, plus 25.91% salary on-costs. $12,456 – advice from finance officer.

Things are getting messy, but the next step will tidy it up.

4. Put it in a spreadsheet

Some people work naturally in spreadsheets (like Excel). Others don’t. If you don’t like Excel, tough. You are going to be doing research budgets for the rest of your research life.

When you are working with budgets, a spreadsheet is the right tool for the job, so learn to use it! Learn enough to construct a simple budget – adding things up and multiplying things together will get you through most of it. Go and do a course if you have to.

For a start, your spreadsheet will multiply things like 7 days in Kuala Lumpur at $89.52 per day, and it will also add up all of your sub-totals for you.

If your budget doesn’t add up properly (because, for example, you constructed it as a table in Word), two things will happen. First, you will look foolish. Secondly, and more importantly, people will lose confidence in all your other numbers, too. If your total is wrong, they will start to question the validity of the rest of your budget. You don’t want that.

If you are shy of maths, then Excel is your friend. It will do most of the heavy lifting for you.

For this exercise, the trick is to put each number on a new line. Here is how it might look.

5. Justify it

Accompanying every budget is a budget justification. For each item in your budget, you need to answer two questions:

Why do you need this money?
Where did you get your figures from?

The budget justification links your budget to your project plan and back again. Everything item in your budget should be listed in your budget justification, so take the list from your budget and paste it into your budget justification.

For each item, give a short paragraph that says why you need it. Refer back to the project plan and expand on what is there. For example, if you have listed a research assistant in your application, this is a perfect opportunity to say what the research assistant will be doing.

Also, for each item, show where you got your figures from. For a research assistant, this might mean talking about the level of responsibility required, so people can understand why you chose the salary level. For a flight, it might be as easy as saying: “Blue Sky airlines economy return flight.”

Here is an example for just one aspect of the budget:

Fieldwork: Kuala Lumpur

Past experience has shown that one month allows enough time to refine and localise interview questions with research partners at University of Malaya, test interview instrument, recruit participants, conduct ten x one-hour interviews with field notes. In addition, the novel methodology will be presented at CONF2015, to be held in Malaysia in February 2015.

Melbourne – Kuala Lumpur economy airfare is based on current Blue Sky Airlines rates. Note that airfares have been kept to a minimum by travelling from country to country, rather than returning to Australia.

1 month accommodation is based on three star, long stay accommodation rates provided by TripAdvisor.

30 days per diem rate is based on standard university rates for South-East Asia.

Pro tip: Use the same nomenclature everywhere. If you list a Thingatron X32C in your budget, then call it a Thingatron X32C in your budget justification and project plan. In an ideal world, someone should be able to flip from the project plan, to the budget and to the budget justification and back again and always know exactly where they are.

Project plan: “Doing fieldwork in Malaysia? Whereabouts?” Flips to budget.
Budget: “A month in Kuala Lumpur – OK. Why a month?” Flips to budget justification.
Budget justification: “Ah, the field work happens at the same time as the conference. Now I get it. So, what are they presenting at the conference?” Flips back to the project description…

So, there you have it: Make a list; check the rules; cost everything; spreadsheet it; and then justify it. Budget done. Good job, team!

This article builds on several previous articles. I have shamelessly stolen from them.

Constructing your budget – Jonathan O’Donnell.
What makes a winning budget ? – Jonathan O’Donnell.
How NOT to pad your budget – Tseen Khoo.
Conquer the budget, conquer the project – Tseen Khoo.
Research on a shoestring – Emily Kothe.
How to make a simple Gantt chart – Jonathan O’Donnell.

* Actually, there are some grant schemes that give you a fixed amount of money, which I think is a really great idea . However, you will still need to work out what you are going to spend the money on, so you will still need a budget at some stage, even if you don’t need it for the application.

Also in the ‘simple grant’ series:

How to write a simple research methods section .
How to make a simple Gantt chart .

Top 7 Research Budget Templates with Samples and Examples

Tejas Prasanna

There is no magic formula for creating a research budget. Depending on the kind of research and the potential changes it can bring about, careful planning and allocation is necessary. Budgets can, thus, vary depending on the sponsors, besides other factors. However, every research budget has some essential guidelines.

Research budgets depend on the project deliverables, timelines, and milestones. The resources required also depend on the scope of the projects and sponsors.

Best Templates for Planning Your Research Budget

Designing a research budget is not easy. You will need to consider the resources required and categorize them according to guidelines to ensure funding is not a problem. The categories may include the project’s necessary supplies and equipment and the wages you must pay your assistants. Research budgets are allocated for a year, but you can also plan for a quarter, depending on the project.

At SlideTeam, we have taken care of all these pain points and designed content-ready presentation templates that address each of these points. You save the time, the resources, and the tedium in having to make these presentations from scratch.

What is even better is that each of the templates is 100% editable and customizable. The content-ready nature means you get a starting point and a structure to guide your presentation; the editability feature means you can customize the template to audience profile.

Let’s explore these templates now.

Template 1 - Impact matrix evaluation research solution budget

This PPT Template is the perfect solution for your research budgeting needs. The matrix suggests what solutions are essential with the help of relevant keys that assign priority levels. Priorities go from low to highest influence with increasing importance. They are color-coded, with white being the lowest and red being the highest influence. For instance, Maintain Awareness and Evaluation are red in many cases, as shown in the slide. So, that means that they bear a significant impact on the research budget. Similarly, Strategic and Budget Planning are color-coded white, which means they don't impact the research budget as much in some cases.

With the impact matrix and heatmap, mapping out your research budget will be a breeze.

Impact Matrix Evaluation Research Solution Budget

Get it now!

Template 2 Half-yearly research and development departmental budget

Research and Development departments can plan the budget required for projects for the two halves of the year using this PPT Template. The presentation template highlights areas for which you will need funding such as research and development, skills, innovation and patenting, and cooperation. You can also list your requirements for each area. For instance, under R&D and skills, you may need funding for medical research, chemical research, etc. Similarly, for innovation and patenting, you may need funding for product innovation and to cover patenting costs. Likewise, cooperation may involve setting up new laboratories and research centers. With this outlined, you can split the budget required for your research project for the two halves of the year.

Download now!

Template 3 - Budget Estimate for Research and Development Project

This presentation template for the budget estimate for your research and development project is apt for arriving at the calculation for the four quarters in a year. You can define and assign tasks as per the requirements of the project and allocate a set budget for each. The tasks may involve conducting market research and competitive analysis or be innovative or developmental. In either case, you can use this template to set a fixed budget for each task in the research project.

Get it today!

Template 4 Clinical Trial Phases with Communication and Budget Research Design for Clinical Trials

Clinical trials involve many phases, and you should let your research associates know about each step. For instance, you could post the information on the company website and provide relevant insights during the pre-trial phase. Similarly, you can offer the welcome letter and training materials during the trial start-up. During the trial, you can send newsletters to your associates, giving them relevant information and other valuable insights. All this requires funding, and you will need to allocate a budget. However, you don't need to worry, as this PPT Preset has you sorted, with dedicated sections for the pre-trial, trial start-up, during-trial, and trial-end phases. It also has communication, insights summary, and budget sections. You can use the budget section in the matrix to allot a budget for each trial phase and each section, including communication and insights.

Download here!

Template 5 Market research strategy with budget and area

The PPT Template has all the core elements required for your market research strategy, including the budget and area. This slide lets you list your clients, the items, and when to send them. You can also list background information related to your research, the aim and objectives of the project, the areas covered, and the budget.

The presentation template also provides a dedicated space to list your brands and products and a timeline for completing the research.

Market Research Strategy with Budget and Area

Template 6 - Determine Budget for Psychology Research Proposal One-Pager Sample Example Document

This presentation template is an easy-to-use tool for determining the budget required for psychology research. With this slide, you can allocate a budget for each area, including diagnostic assessment, training, technology and tools, supplies, travel, and workforce. It is a practical, hands-on template with information required to plan the budget for conducting psychological tests and evaluations. Please note that depending on your geography, taxes might or might not deserve a separate column.

Template 7 - Budgeting for Product Launch Market Research

Every company needs to conduct market research before launching a new product. The PowerPoint Presentation that you have here can help you plan the budget required for conducting such market research. It includes necessary information, including business and research objectives, priorities, methodologies, and forecasts. The presentation template also has the metrics required for the research, such as improving customer engagement, introducing new products, and increasing market share. For example, to improve customer engagement, you may be looking to improve marketing approaches and gather customer feedback. The methods you may use include conducting marketing mix studies and tests. Similarly, you may want to optimize your social media posts and profiles and conduct A/B tests when introducing new products. Improving your market share may involve analyzing the competition. You may even use this handy template for conducting market research, estimating, and forecasting budgets.

RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT BUSINESS

You can plan your research and the budget required using these templates. Remember that each new product launch has lots of research behind it. When going for a new launch, don’t just research the products and its uses, but also the markets – particularly, your target audience and how they will benefit from your brands. When allocating the budget for your research, don't forget to note your total resources and try to be as cost-effective as possible. You must consider the expected costs that you may incur and use these templates to work out a research budget that fits within your resources.

FAQs on Research Budget

What should be included in a research budget.

Research budgets should include all direct costs, and facilities and administrative costs (F&A). The facilities and administrative expenses are needed to achieve the primary objectives of the research. The project description should state the proposed budget and serve as a financial expression for the research. The idea is to ensure that the budget is comprehensive.

How do you create a research budget?

You can create a simple research budget by following these steps:

List activities that will help you carry out the research.
Check the rules for getting the funding required.
Check all costs involved.
Lay out the costs using a spreadsheet.
Justify your budget by asking why and for what you need the money and where you got your figures.

What is the role of budget in research?

A budget can provide a detailed and clear picture of the structure of the research project, not to mention that it also lets you know how well it can be managed. The research project budget usually lets you see whether it will go according to plan and if it is feasible. So, it must be complete and reasonable.

What is the average budget for a research project?

The budget for a research project depends on the type of research and the proposed difference it could make to a field of study. For instance, the average budget for a market research project may vary between $20,000 and $50,000. Similarly, larger scientific research projects may cost millions or even billions of dollars, as in pharmaceuticals.

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Develop a research budget
Research Expertise Engine
Precursors to research
Funding & award opportunities
Grants vs contracts
Sample Applications Library
Factors to consider
Internal Approval (formerly SFU Signature Sheet)
Develop a research proposal
Institutional support
Review & submission
Award & approval
Award management
Contracts & agreements
Inventions & commercialization
Ethics - human research
Ethics - animal research
Research safety
Mobilizing Research
Prizes & awards
Training & events
Forms & documents

Budgets should provide the sponsor with an accurate assessment of all cost items and cost amounts that are deemed necessary and reasonable to carry out your project. They should be based upon your description or the statement of work. Budget justification provides more in-depth detail and reason for each cost and is often considered by reviewers as a good indicator of the feasibility of the research.

A research budget contains both direct costs and indirect costs (overhead), but the level of detail varies from sponsor to sponsor. The first step in developing a budget is to carefully read the guidelines of the funding opportunity being pursued.

There is no magic formula available for developing a budget but there are some basic steps to follow in order to develop an accurate budget:

Define project tasks, timelines and milestones and determine the actual resources and costs required to complete these. Consider whether contingencies are needed (and confirm they are eligible expenses).
Determine the eligible expense categories and maximum amount allowed by the sponsor. Adjust scope of the project to make sure proposed activities fit within the allowance.
Categorize these costs (e.g., salaries, supplies, equipment…) per year, in some cases by quarter.
Ensure that project scope and budget match. Include indirect costs of research as permitted by sponsor and the University policy.

The examples below developed by the University of British Columbia demonstrate two ways to include indirect costs in your budget.

Price model: Indirect cost is built into each budget line item.
Cost model: Indirect cost of research is presented as a separate line item.

Unless the sponsor specifies in writing that they require the indirect costs of research to be presented as a separate line item (Cost Model), the indirect cost should be built into each budget line item (Price Model). Indirect costs are normally included in the price of goods and services worldwide.

For example, you are developing a budget for a funding opportunity with an indirect cost rate of 25%. Your direct costs are $201,000 broken down by expense categories shown in the second column of the table below. The third and fourth colums present the two ways you can include the 25% overhead in your budget using the Price Model or the Cost Model, respectively:

In-kind and cash contributions, like other costs to the sponsored project, must be eligible and must be treated in a consistent and uniform manner in proposal preparation and in financial reporting.

Cash contributions

Cash contributions are actual cash transactions that can be documented in the accounting system. Examples of cash contributions include:

allocation of compensated faculty and staff time to projects, or
the purchasing of equipment by the university or other eligible sponsor for the benefit of the project.

In-kind contributions

In-kind contributions are both non-monetary or cash equivalent resources that can be given a cash value, such as goods and/or services in support of a research project or proposal. It is challenging to report on in-kind contribution, please make sure the numbers you use are well supported, consistent and easy to quantitate.

Examples of an in-kind contribution may include:

Access to unique database or information
Professional, analytical, and other donated services
Employee salaries including benefits for time allocated to the project
Study materials, technologies, or components
Patents and licenses for use
Use of facilities (e.g., lab or meeting spaces)
Partner organization time spent participating in the project
Eligible infrastructure items

Matching on sponsored projects

Some sponsored projects require the university and/or a third party to contribute a portion of the project costs–this contribution is known as matching.

Matching requirements may be in the form of an actual cash expenditure of funds or may be an “in-kind” match. For example:

A 1:1 match would require $100 of a third-party matching for every $100 received from an agency.
A 30% match would mean that of a total budget of $100, the agency would provide $70 and a third party would need to match $30.

Examples of agency programs that include some form of matching from a third party are:

NSERC Collaborative Research and Development Grants
NSERC Idea to Innovation Grants
SSHRC Partnership Grants
CIHR Industry Partnered Collaborative Research Program, and
CIHR Proof of Principle Grants

Additional resources

Current salary and benefit rates for graduate students and postdocs/research associates
SFU Business and Travel Expense Policy
Animal care services

Budget Justification

A well-developed budget is accompanied by a budget explanation or narrative, also known as a budget justification. A complete and realistic budget justification demonstrates that your project is well conceived. It also tends to minimize the chances that sponsors will arbitrarily reduce or eliminate budget categories. Sponsors have a good idea of what a project should cost, and generally know when you are over or under budgeting. See some examples/templates below .

The budget is reviewed by OPAS and the sponsor to verify that costs are reasonable, allowable, allocable and necessary to carry out the proposed project, and if it conforms to the sponsor's instructions. During award negotiations a budget is sometimes subjected to further analysis by the sponsor's audit staff. Thus it is important to maintain all the documentation and justification you can assemble for each cost element and category, in case the sponsor questions items and estimates.

For newcomers to the process, consult with experienced faculty or staff within your department for advice, or contact the OPAS pre-award administrator assigned by sponsor to discuss potential costing.

The budget justification is a categorical description of the proposed costs. Generally, it explains staffing and supply/service consumption patterns, the methods used to estimate/calculate (including escalation or inflation factors) and other details such as lists of items that make up the total costs for a category. The budget justification should address each of major cost categories (salaries, fringe benefits, equipment, travel, supplies, other direct costs and indirect costs), as well as any additional categories required by the sponsor.

A thoroughly written justification that explains both the necessity and the basis for the proposed costs must accompany the budget. The justification section is critical as it enables the principal investigator to emphasize the importance of essential project costs. A budget that is adequately and appropriately justified is the best way to assure a positive cost analysis by the sponsor.

Below are some helpful tips:

Organize the budget justification listing items in the same order and format as the sponsor’s budget categories.
Only include budgeted items. Some sponsors like NSF will disqualify a proposal if contributed items are listed. Do not list cost-shared items unless cost-sharing is mandated by the sponsor.
Budget narrative must match the budget in terms of dollar amounts and language – double check everything.
Explain why items are essential in relation to the aims and methodology of the project as well as meeting the goals of the project.
Explain the line items. Do not merely restate the proposed expenditure.
Provide detail sufficient to justify the rationale for acquiring the item under the proposed project.

Budget Justification Examples and Templates

NSF Budget Justification example

NIH Budget Justification example

Budget Justification For Any Sponsor

Salaries and Wages

Also see Budget Development: Personnel Costs .

List all personnel and positions to be paid with project funds and briefly describe their role in the project.
Only list paid personnel unless cost-sharing is mandated by the sponsor.
In addition to how the sponsor requires effort to be shown, also always list effort in person months for faculty and staff. For Graduate Research Assistants, list number of months and hours per week.
When listing effort, do not use approximations. Show effort out to two decimal points (e.g. 1.52 months) as applicable.
Include a COLA of 3% to 5%. Verify any sponsor-driven limitations on COLAs. Currently for example, UMass budgets only 2% with the NIH.

Consultants

Also see Budget Development: Consultants .

List consultant name and describe in detail the services to be performed.
Include number of days, rate of compensation, and total amount per year. This must be corroborated in a letter provided by the consultant.

Also see Budget Development: Equipment .

Definition of Equipment : a unit cost of $5,000 or more and a useful life of at least one year.
Get accurate price quotes
Explain why the equipment is needed in support of the project aims.
Confirm equipment is dedicated to the project. If equipment is shared with other projects, budget an amount that corresponds to expected project use and verify the rationale. Split funding of equipment should only generally occur with large equipment purchases.

Materials and Supplies

Also see Budget Development: Materials and Supplies .

Only request supplies directly relevant (allocable) to the research plan.
Explain in detail why specific supplies are needed.
Do not request general office supplies if federal (allowability).
Budgeting should be based on actual experience or quotes (reasonableness).
Use an inflation factor (COLA) for future years (verify any sponsor limits).
The breakdown should be more detailed when the total supplies cost is substantial. Where large amounts of supplies or expensive items are budgeted, specify items and justify their necessity.

Also see Budget Development: Travel .

Ask for reasonable amounts.
Indicate basis of cost (historical, quotes, etc.)
State exactly which relevant meeting/conference you plan to attend. If not known, provide examples.
Include breakdown of costs for airfare, meals, lodging, and ground transportation. Some sponsors like NSF will reject a proposal if insufficient details are provided.
Include number of people, number of days, purpose and location of travel.
Budgeting should be based on actual experience or quotes.
Use an inflation factor (COLA) for future years.
Avoid partial financing of travel requirements.

Other Direct Costs

See also Budget Development: Other Direct Costs .

Fee-for-service: Justify use; show the University approved rate, or if an external vendor, their published rate. (internal link here to “Fee-for-service)
Equipment maintenance and service contract (justify need) and verify that the covered equipment is dedicated to the project; If proportional use on the covered equipment is anticipated, provide the proportional cost/use rationale; Cost/usage should not generally fall below 50%; Note the basis of the cost (quotes, etc.)
Software should be identified by brand, type, and unit cost; verify in the justification that it is dedicated to the project; and provide a strong justification for why it is needed especially emphasizing what aspect of the project will benefit from its use; the software should not be general purpose software but rather specialized in a manner that supports the specific technical aims of the project; verify basis of cost (quotes, catalog prices, etc.) (link to software costing info above)
Human Subject Payments (breakdown # of subjects and cost to each)
Provide details for publication costs.
Give detailed breakdown of each cost.
Tuition – provide details. See the Fact Sheet for current rates and provide them to the sponsor. Use the Kuali Salary Guide (Excel) .

Subcontractors/Subrecipients

See also Budget Development: Subcontracts .

Clearly identify subcontracting organizations and their key personnel.
Briefly explain their scope of work.
Explain the need to contract with a particular organization, expertise of subcontractor PI, institutional facilities.
Keep in mind that subcontractors will provide their own detailed budgets and corresponding budget justifications. These should be separate and distinct from the UMass budget and budget justification and follow the UMass budget and budget justification.

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About Grants
How to Apply - Application Guide
Format and Write

Develop Your Budget

Cost considerations, budgets: getting started.

Allowable direct vs. allowable F&A costs
Modular vs. Detailed Budgets

Modular Budgets

Detailed Budget: Personnel (Sec A & B)
Detailed Budget: Equipment, Travel, and Trainee Costs (Sec C, D, and E)
Detailed Budget: Other Direct Costs (Sec F)

Consortiums/Subawards

Understanding the out years.

Other resources

As you begin to develop a budget for your research grant application and put all of the relevant costs down on paper, many questions may arise. Your best resources for answering these questions are the grants or sponsored programs office within your own institution, your departmental administrative officials, and your peers. They can answer questions such as:

What should be considered a direct cost or indirect cost?
What is the fringe benefit rate?
What is the graduate student stipend rate?
What Facilities and Administrative (F&A) costs rate should I use?

Below are some additional tips and reminders we have found to be helpful for preparing a research grant application, mainly geared towards the SF424 (R&R) application. (Note: these tips do not supersede the budget instructions found in the relevant application instruction guide found on the How to Apply - Application Guide page.

An applicant's budget request is reviewed for compliance with the governing cost principles and other requirements and policies applicable to the type of recipient and the type of award. Any resulting award will include a budget that is consistent with these requirements. Information on the applicable cost principles and on allowable and unallowable costs under NIH grants is provided in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, Section 7.2 The Cost Principles Statement under Cost Considerations /grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_7/7_cost_consideration.htm . In general, NIH grant awards provide for reimbursement of actual, allowable costs incurred and are subject to Federal cost principles /grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_7/7.2_the_cost_principles.htm .

The cost principles address four tests that NIH follows in determining the allowability of costs. Costs charged to awards must be allowable, allocable, reasonable, necessary, and consistently applied regardless of the source of funds. NIH may disallow the costs if it determines, through audit or otherwise, that the costs do not meet the tests of allowability, allocability, reasonableness, necessity, and consistency.

II.1 (Mechanism of Support),
II.2 (Funds Available),
III.2 (Cost Sharing or Matching), and
IV.5 (Funding Restrictions).
Identify all the costs that are necessary and reasonable to complete the work described in your proposal.
Throughout the budgeting process, round to whole dollars and use only U.S. dollars.
Reviewers look for reasonable costs and will judge whether your request is justified by your aims and methods.
Reviewers will consider the person months you've listed for each of the senior/key personnel and will judge whether the figures are in sync with reviewer expectations, based on the research proposed.
Significant over- or under-estimating suggests you may not understand the scope of the work. Despite popular myth, proposing a cost-sharing (matching) arrangement where you only request that NIH support some of the funding while your organization funds the remainder does not normally impact the evaluation of your proposal. Only a few select programs require cost-sharing, and these programs will address cost-sharing in the funding opportunity.

Direct Costs: Costs that can be identified specifically with a particular sponsored project, an instructional activity, or any other institutional activity, or that can be directly assigned to such activities relatively easily with a high degree of accuracy.

F&A Costs: Necessary costs incurred by a recipient for a common or joint purpose benefitting more than one cost objective, and not readily assignable to the cost objectives specifically benefitted, without effort disproportionate to the results achieved. To facilitate equitable distribution of indirect expenses to the cost objectives served, it may be necessary to establish a number of pools of F&A (indirect) costs. F&A (indirect) cost pools must be distributed to benefitted cost objectives on bases that will produce an equitable result in consideration of relative benefits derived.

The total costs requested in your budget will include allowable direct costs (related to the performance of the grant) plus allowable F&A costs. If awarded, each budget period of the Notice of Award will reflect direct costs, applicable F&A, and in the case of SBIR or STTR awards, a "profit" or fee .
For most institutions the negotiated F&A rate will use a modified total direct cost base, which excludes items such as: equipment, student tuition, research patient care costs, rent, and sub-recipient charges (after the first $25,000). Check with your sponsored programs office to find out your negotiated direct cost base.
When calculating whether your direct cost per year is $500,000 or greater, do not include any sub-recipient F&A in the base but do include all other direct costs as well as any equipment costs. NOTE: Direct cost requests equal to or greater than $500,000 require prior approval from the NIH Institute/Center before application submission. For more information, see NIH Guide Notice NOT-OD-02-004 .
For many SBIR/STTR recipients, 40% of modified total direct costs is a common F&A rate, although rates at organizations may vary.

Modular versus Detailed Budgets

The NIH uses 2 different formats for budget submission depending on the total direct costs requested and the activity code used.

The application forms package associated with most NIH funding opportunities includes two optional budget forms—(1) R&R Budget Form; and, (2) PHS 398 Modular Budget Form. NIH applications will include either the R&R Budget Form or the PHS 398 Modular Budget Form, but not both. To determine whether to use a detailed versus modular budget for your NIH application, see the flowchart below.

NIH uses a modular budget format to request up to a total of $250,000 of direct costs per year (in modules of $25,000, excluding consortium F&A costs) for some applications, rather than requiring a full detailed budget. The modular budget format is NOT accepted for

SBIR and STTR grant applications,
applications from foreign (non-U.S.) institutions (must use detailed budget even when modular option is available), or
applications that propose the use of human fetal tissue (HFT) obtained from elective abortions (as defined in NOT-OD-19-128 for HFT) whether or not costs are incurred.

Creating a modular budget

Select the PHS398 Modular Budget form for your submission package, and use the appropriate set of instructions from the electronic application user's guide. You do not need to submit the SF424 (R&R) Budget form if you submit the PHS398 Modular Budget form.
Consider creating a detailed budget for your own institution's use including salaries, equipment, supplies, graduate student tuition, etc. for every year of funds requested. While the NIH will not ask for these details, they are important for you to have on hand when calculating your F&A costs base and writing your justification, and for audit purposes.
In order to determine how many modules you should request, subtract any consortium F&A from the total direct costs, and then round to the nearest $25,000 increment.

A modular budget justification should include:

Personnel Justification: The Personnel Justification should include the name, role, and number of person-months devoted to this project for every person on the project. Do not include salary and fringe benefit rate in the justification, but keep in mind the legislatively mandated salary cap when calculating your budget. [When preparing a modular budget, you are instructed to use the current cap when determining the appropriate number of modules.]
Consortium Justification: If you have a consortium/subcontract, include the total costs (direct costs plus F&A costs), rounded to the nearest $1,000, for each consortium/subcontract. Additionally, any personnel should include their roles and person months; if the consortium is foreign, that should be stated as well.
Additional Narrative Justification: Additional justification should include explanations for any variations in the number of modules requested annually. Also, this section should describe any direct costs that were excluded from the total direct costs (such as equipment, tuition remission) and any work being conducted off-site, especially if it involves a foreign study site or an off-site F&A rate.

See the NIH Modular Research Grant Applications page and the NIH Grants Policy Statement for more information.

Detailed Budget: Personnel (Sections A & B)

Personnel make up sections A and B of the SF424 (R&R) Budget form. All personnel from the applicant organization dedicating effort to the project should be listed on the personnel budget with their base salary and effort, even if they are not requesting salary support.

Effort : Effort must be reported in person months. For help converting percent effort to person months, see: /grants/policy/person_months_faqs.htm .
Salary Caps: NIH will not pay requested salary above the annual salary cap, which can be found at /grants/policy/salcap_summary.htm . If salary is requested above the salary cap, NIH will reduce that line item to the salary cap, resulting in a reduced total award amount. In future years, if the salary cap increases, recipients may rebudget to pay investigator salaries up to the new salary cap, but NIH will not increase the total award amount. If you are preparing a detailed budget, you are instructed to base your request on actual institutional base salaries (not the cap) so that NIH staff has the most current information in hand at the time of award and can apply the appropriate salary cap at that time.
Fringe Benefits: The fringe benefits rate is based on your institution's policy; the NIH does not have a pre-set limit on fringe benefits. More information on what is included as fringe benefits can be found in the Grants Policy Statement at /grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_12/12.8.1_salaries_and_fringe_benefits.htm . If you have questions about what rate to use, consult your institution's sponsored programs office.
Senior/Key Personnel: The Senior/Key Personnel section should include any senior or key personnel from the applicant organization who are dedicating effort to this project. "Other Significant Contributors" who dedicate negligible effort should not be included. Some common significant contributors include: 1) CEOs of companies who provide overall leadership, but no direct contribution to the research; and 2) mentors for K awardees, who provide advice and guidance to the candidate but do not work on the project. Likewise, any consultants or collaborators who are not employed by the applicant organization should not be included in section A, but rather should be included in section F.3 of the budget (for consultants) or in section A of the consortium/subaward budget page (for collaborators).
Postdoctoral Associates: Postdocs can be listed in either section A or B depending on their level of involvement in project design and execution. If listed in section B, include the individuals' names and level of effort in the budget justification section.
Other Personnel: Other personnel can be listed by project role. If multiple people share the same role such as "lab technician", indicate the number of personnel to the left of the role description, add their person months together, and add their requested salaries together. The salaries of secretarial/clerical staff should normally be treated as F&A costs. Direct charging of these costs may be appropriate where a major project or activity explicitly budgets for administrative or clerical services and individuals involved can be specifically identified with the project or activity [see Exhibit C of OMB Circular A-21 (relocated to 2 CFR, Part 220)]. Be specific in your budget justifications when describing other personnel's roles and responsibilities.

Detailed Budget: Equipment, Travel, and Trainee Costs (Sections C, D, and E)

Generally equipment is excluded from the F&A base, so if you have something with a short service life (< 1 year), even if it costs more than $5,000, you are better off including it under "supplies".
If you request equipment that is already available (listed in the Facilities & Other Resources section, for example), the narrative justification must explain why the current equipment is insufficient to accomplish the proposed research and how the new equipment's use will be allocated specifically to the proposed research. Otherwise, NIH may disallow this cost.
General purpose equipment, such as desktop computers and laptops, that will be used on multiple projects or for personal use should not be listed as a direct cost but should come out of the F&A costs, unless primarily or exclusively used in the actual conduct of the proposed scientific research.
While the application does not require you to have a price quote for new equipment, including price quotes in your budget justification can aid in the evaluation of the equipment cost to support the project.
Trainee Costs: Leave this section blank unless otherwise stated in the funding opportunity. Graduate student tuition remission can be entered in section F.8.

Detailed Budget: Other Direct Costs (Section F)

Materials and Supplies: In the budget justification, indicate general categories such as glassware, chemicals, animal costs, including an amount for each category. Categories that include costs less than $1,000 do not have to be itemized.
Animal Costs: While included under "materials and supplies", it is often helpful to include more specific details about how you developed your estimate for animal costs. Include the number of animals you expect to use, the purchase price for the animals (if you need to purchase any), and your animal facility's per diem care rate, if available. Details are especially helpful if your animal care costs are unusually large or small. For example, if you plan to follow your animals for an abnormally long time period and do not include per diem rates, the reviewers may think you have budgeted too much for animal costs and may recommend a budget cut.
Publication Costs: You may include the costs associated with helping you disseminate your research findings from the proposed research. If this is a new application, you may want to delay publication costs until the later budget periods, once you have actually obtained data to share.
Consultant Services: Consultants differ from Consortiums in that they may provide advice, but should not be making decisions for the direction of the research. Typically, consultants will charge a fixed rate for their services that includes both their direct and F&A costs. You do not need to report separate direct and F&A costs for consultants; however, you should report how much of the total estimated costs will be spent on travel. Consultants are not subject to the salary cap restriction; however, any consultant charges should meet your institution's definition of "reasonableness".
ADP/Computer Services: The services you include here should be research specific computer services- such as reserving computing time on supercomputers or getting specialized software to help run your statistics. This section should not include your standard desktop office computer, laptop, or the standard tech support provided by your institution. Those types of charges should come out of the F&A costs.
Justify basis for costs, itemize by category.
Enter the total funds requested for alterations and renovations. Where applicable, provide the square footage and costs.
If A&R costs are in excess of $300,000 further limitations apply and additional documentation will be required.
The names of any hospitals and/or clinics and the amounts requested for each.
If both inpatient and outpatient costs are requested, provide information for each separately.
Provide cost breakdown, number of days, number of patients, costs of tests/treatments.
Justify the costs associated with standard care or research care. (Note: If these costs are associated with patient accrual, restrictions may be justified in the Notice of Award.) (See NIH Grants Policy Statement NIH Grants Policy Statement, Research Patient Care Costs )
Tuition: In your budget justification, for any graduate students on your project, include what your school's tuition rates are. You may have to report both an in-state and out-of-state tuition rate. Depending on your school stipend and tuition levels, you may have to budget less than your school's full tuition rate in order to meet the graduate student compensation limit (equivalent to the NRSA zero-level postdoctorate stipend level).
Human Fetal Tissue (HFT) from elective abortions: If your application proposes the use of human fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions (as defined in NOT-OD-19-128 ), you must include a line item titled “Human Fetal Tissue Costs” on the budget form and an explanation of those costs in the budget justification.
Other: Some types of costs, such as entertainment costs, are not allowed under federal grants. NIH has included a list of the most common questionable items in the NIH Grants Policy Statement ( /grants/policy/nihgps/HTML5/section_7/7_cost_consideration.htm ). If NIH discovers an unallowable cost in your budget, generally we will discount that cost from your total award amount, so it is in your best interest to avoid requesting unallowable costs. If you have any question over whether a cost is allowable, contact your sponsored programs office or the grants management specialist listed on the funding opportunity.

If you are using the detailed budget format, each consortium you include must have an independent budget form filled out.

In the rare case of third tier subawards, section F.5 "subawards/consortium/contractual" costs should include the total cost of the subaward, and the entire third tier award is considered part of the direct costs of the consortium for the purposes of calculating the primary applicant's direct costs.
Cost Principles. Regardless of what cost principles apply to the parent recipient, the consortium is held to the standards of their respective set of cost principles.
Consortium F&A costs are NOT included as part of the direct cost base when determining whether the application can use the modular format (direct costs < $250,000 per year), or determining whether prior approval is needed to submit an application (direct costs $500,000 or more for any year). NOTE: The $500K prior approval policy does not apply to applications submitted in response to RFAs or in response to other funding opportunities including specific budgetary limits above $500K.
F&A costs for the first $25,000 of each consortium may be included in the modified total direct cost base, when calculating the overall F&A rate, as long as your institution's negotiated F&A rate agreement does not express prohibit it.
If the consortium is a foreign institution or international organization, F&A for the consortium is limited to 8%.
Consortiums should each provide a budget justification following their detailed budget. The justification should be separate from the primary recipient's justification and address just those items that pertain to the consortium.
We do not expect your budget to predict perfectly how you will spend your money five years down the road. However, we do expect a reasonable approximation of what you intend to spend. Be thorough enough to convince the reviewers that you have a good sense of the overall costs.
In general, NIH does not have policy on salary escalation submitted in an application. We advise applicants to request in the application the actual costs needed for the budget period and to request cost escalations only if the escalation is consistent with institutional policy. See /grants/policy/salcap_summary.htm and /grants/policy/fy2012_salary_cap_faqs.htm .
Any large year-to-year variation should be described in your budget justification. For example, if you have money set aside for consultants only in the final year of your budget, be sure to explain why in your justification (e.g. the consultants are intended to help you with the statistical interpretation of the data and therefore are not needed before the final year).
In general, NIH recipients are allowed a certain degree of latitude to rebudget within and between budget categories to meet unanticipated needs and to make other types of post-award changes. Some changes may be made at the recipient's discretion as long as they are within the limits established by NIH. In other cases, NIH prior written approval may be required before a recipient makes certain budget modifications or undertakes particular activities (such as change in scope). See NIH Grants Policy Statement - Changes in Project and Budget .

Other resources to help you create your budget

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Review information on developing proposal budgets.

Budget Development

Budget approvals, sage budget, proposals to foreign sponsors, budgeting direct costs, salaries and salary considerations, employee benefits, other direct costs.

Facilities & Administrative Costs (F&A)

Subaward Budget Development and F&A Calculations

Budget Justification Cost Share Clinical Trial Budget Resources Animal Research Considerations Human Subjects Research Considerations Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Considerations

A budget is a detailed statement outlining estimated project costs that support a sponsored project . It should include all Direct Costs, as well as the calculated Facilities and Administrative (F&A) costs required to carry out the project objectives. The proposal budget should be derived directly from the project description and serves as the financial expression of the project.

Follow sponsor guidelines on requirements, allowability, and format. Be aware of specific purchase restrictions such as the Telecommunications Purchase Restrictions on federal awards.

Before making purchases with new vendors for procurement purchases under $35k, verify they are not listed within the SAM.gov exclusions list.

Plan for requirements in federal contracts that impact your budget.

Costing principles in GIM 23 and the Uniform Guidance apply to all sponsored programs at UW.

Sponsor and UW budget categories sometimes don’t match. Review UW Budget categories and try to map them to the sponsor categories when preparing your budget.

The System to Administer Grants Electronically (SAGE) is the UW approval routing system for sponsored program proposals. Associated departments review and approve the entire proposal including related budgets via eGC1 forms .

SAGE Budget is the UW recommended tool for preparing proposal budgets and is required at time of award with an Award Setup Request . It provides streamlined, efficient entry with reliable calculations leveraged from institutional data (UW salaries, benefits, and F&A rates).

Budgets created using this tool also provide an easy-to-read summary for reviewers and Principal Investigators. SAGE Budgets can be connected to eGC1s for easy reference, and can also be used in Grant Runner to populate budget data on a federal RR budget form.

For Award Setup or Modification Requests, you are required to attach a SAGE Budget. Review How to set up an award at the UW for more details.

The UW prefers to be paid in U.S. Dollars, not foreign currency. Exchange rates fluctuate on a daily basis. If awarded in foreign currency, the value of sponsor payments can vary throughout the life of an award.

If the sponsor insists the proposal budget be expressed in foreign currency (and will pay in foreign currency), use an online currency converter to calculate the budget amounts on the eGC1 from U.S. dollars (USD) into the sponsor’s currency.

When sponsors make award payments in foreign currencies, the PI and department need to review the award amount and provide a budget using the current exchange rate. This is used to estimate the award amount in USD to set up the sponsored program budget. It is the PI’s responsibility to monitor spending and currency fluctuations closely throughout the award. Whenever converting foreign currency to USD for use in official budget documents, attach a screenshot that shows the date of the currency conversion in SAGE.

Note: The PI and department are responsible for resolving deficits , including those that may arise from currency fluctuation.

Setup Awards from Foreign Sponsors Made in Foreign Currency
More information and examples from Grant & Contract Accounting on Awards Paid in Foreign Currency

Cost Allocation

When costs will benefit more than one project, they need to be allocated in proportion to how they will benefit each award. Document the allocation methodology used to budget the cost in your budget justification and in your award file. Make sure that methodology is consistently applied across like circumstances.

Acceptable Allocation Method Examples:

Number of experiments, hours, clients or employees/FTE on the project
Square footage

Costs that will only benefit one award should only be budgeted for that award. Costs may not be allocated to more than one project based on budgetary convenience.

Direct costs are expenses specifically associated with a particular sponsored project or activity or that can be directly assigned to that project or activity with a high degree of accuracy (e.g. supplies allocation).

Personnel Salaries and Benefits are typically the largest categories of expenses. Review UW Human Resources compensation information .

Names and titles of personnel committing effort to this project.
Effort each will devote to the sponsored activity, expressed as a percentage or calendar/academic months
Institutional Base Salary (IBS)

Salary costs must be:

Appropriate for the effort expended
Consistent with the appointment of the individual
Supported by documentation of the expense
Included in the proposal and approved by the sponsor or within re-budgeting authority

Review examples of unallowable direct salary costs on a sponsored program

Compensation for teaching costs unless the sponsored program activity type is for Instruction or Research training, consultation or other non-University activity, excess compensation charges not included in Institutional Base Salary (IBS), and administrative or clerical salaries, unless justified and approved by the sponsor.

Salary Limitations

Some sponsors impose salary limitations, also sometimes known as salary caps e.g.: National Institutes of Health (NIH) salary caps .

Review guidance for Documenting Salary Caps on Proposal Budgets .

Summer Salaries

Faculty with 9-month appointments

Review UW Summer salary guidance
When allowed by sponsors, summer salary should be budgeted as separate line items from academic year salary.

Supplements

Approved supplements are available in the payroll system and reflected in the Institutional Base Salary .

Anticipated Salary Increases

When allowed by the sponsor, these increases should be included in the budget calculation. Increases must be reasonable and justified in the proposal.

Cost of Living Allowances (COLA) are not set in UW policy. Some sponsors do not allow or impose limits on COLA.
Classified staff mandatory step increases according to HR compensation guidance .
Classified staff
Professional staff

Administrative and Clerical Salaries

Salaries of administrative and clerical staff are normally treated as F&A costs.

Administrative and clerical costs may be proposed as direct costs if all four of these criteria exist:

Integral to the project or activity,
Identified specifically with the project or activity,
Explicitly included in the budget or have prior written approval of Federal awarding agency and,
Not also recovered as indirect costs.

If these costs are budgeted as direct costs, you must provide justification in the proposal.

Examples of potentially allowable direct charged administrative and clerical staff costs:

Organizing a conference as a component of a larger project
Managing travel for a large number of participants
Organizing large datasets
Managing complex projects with multiple sites, especially if there are multiple subawards.

If questioned, PI must justify expenses to the sponsor and auditors and will be responsible for paying back any unallowable expenses, if required.

Faculty with Veteran Affairs (VA) Appointments

For faculty who have a VA appointment (up to 40 hours or “8/8th”) and up to a full-time appointment with the UW, use the UW IBS to calculate effort and salary compensation.

Dr. Y has a full-time salary rate of $100,000 has a 50% UW appointment and is requesting 10% salary support. The commitment on the proposal represents 10% of the 50% appointment.

Salary: 10% of the 50% salary, $5,000 ($100,000 x 50% x 10%)
Person Months: 10% of 50% time = 0.6 person months.
Percent Effort: 10% of 50% time, or 5%

Graduate Student Compensation

Graduate student appointments (GSA) are considered full-time at 50% FTE during the academic year and 100% during summer. When including Graduate assistants, budget for salaries, fringe benefits and tuition remission.

Use the average first-year postdoc compensation level in the respective school/college, or in the absence of a policy, consult the UW Academic Resources salary rates and minimums schedule . Budget for full actual costs.

NIH Awards: The maximum amount awarded by NIH for graduate students supported on research grants or cooperative agreements is tied to the zero level National Research Service Award (NRSA) postdoctoral stipend in effect at the time the grant award is issued.

Employee Benefits (i.e., fringe) are a direct cost charged as a percentage of salary. The rates are reviewed and approved by the federal government and apply to all sponsored projects.

Use the active rates for the applicable time period, and use the preliminary/proposed rates (if available) for all future years.

Current and Preliminary Benefit Rates

Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Costs

Before including APL personnel or locations in your budget, contact the appropriate APL department administrator . They will help ensure all applicable APL Prorated Direct Costs, APL Fixed Fee and budget justifications are included in your proposal budget.

APL’s sole purpose is research, and its operating expenses are an allowable direct cost (2 CFR Part §200.413) on projects where APL personnel or locations are involved. APL operating expenses are recovered through the application of the APL Prorated Direct Costs (PDC) rate.

Personal Service Contracts

Individual people or entities participating in a sponsored program as a non-employee.

Examples include:

Participation of persons as research subjects
Implementation of computer systems
Contracts to conduct and provide survey results, environmental studies, and assessments
POD training
Professional consultants

Review a full list of UW personal service categories .

Professional Consultants

Consult sponsor guidance for including consultants in your budget, requirements vary.

Independent contractors, who are:

Typically experts in the field
Not UW employees and,
Don’t have a faculty appointment (e.g. VA, Children’s, etc.)

Include a letter of collaboration with dates of service, rate of pay, other miscellaneous expenses, and deliverables.

Collaborators at other higher education institutions who plan to use institutional resources are considered subrecipients and will need a formal subaward set up.

Review guidance for determining Subrecipient, Vendor, or Consultant?

Participant Support Costs

Direct costs for stipends or subsistence allowances, travel allowances, and registration fees paid to or on behalf of participants or trainees (but not employees) in connection with conferences or training projects.

Participant support costs are allowable if the project includes an education or outreach component, the costs are separately budgeted, and the agency approves the cost. Include the following in budget justification: “The inclusion of the participant support costs in the budget and the subsequent award by the agency will be considered prior agency approval.”

More information from Post Award Fiscal Compliance on Participant Support .

Other Contractual Services

Vendors or Suppliers who provide routine services for a fee , (e.g. Consultant Travel, Advertising, Shipping, Rent, Inpatient and outpatient hospital charges, Laboratory Fees).

Is it a Sponsored Program or a Service?

Subawards/Subcontracts

Review guidance for preparing proposals with subawards and the UW policy for Sponsored Program Subaward Administration . List each subaward separately, using the appropriate subaward object class/spend category. Calculate F&A on subawards following GIM 13 guidelines.

Review subaward budget development and F&A calculations .

What if subrecipient doesn’t have a negotiated rate?

If a prime sponsor has a published F&A rate policy, the subrecipient should propose its F&A in accordance with this policy.

For example, the NIH limits F&A on Grants to Foreign and International Organizations to 8% with a few exceptions.

If the originating sponsor is silent on F&A, the F&A rate subrecipient should use is 10% Modified Total Direct Costs (MTDC).

Include estimated travel costs according to UW travel policies for:

itemized transportation costs (e.g. airfare, ground transportation, etc.),
number of days per diem,
number and estimated cost of trips
on federal awards, justify how each person’s travel is necessary to the award.
If the exact location is not known, include the general location.

Most sponsors require that you justify and retain documentation for travel expenses including how they benefit the project.

Review Post Award Fiscal Compliance travel guidance .

International Travel

Global Operations Support Essential information for travel planning and risk awareness
Global Travel Information for UW travelers
Global Research Single Points of Contact
Review Export Compliance Measures
Global Support: Student International Travel Policy

Supplies and Materials

List supplies by major type , (e.g., publication costs, glassware, chemicals). Include the estimated cost of each type and how estimates were calculated, e.g. publications costs: list number of pages and cost per page.

Describe the allocation rationale for supplies and materials between different proposals/awards in your budget justification.

Prior year accounting records or other documentation may be used to support estimates. Retain documentation in your award file.

Considerations for Supplies and Materials

Food, meals, and refreshments: Awards must specify and allow food purchases if they are included in the budget. Review UW food purchase guidance.
Office Supplies: generally unallowable as a direct cost under federal awards.
Review Administrative and Clerical Staff Salary budget preparation guidance .
Avoid “Miscellaneous” and “Contingency” categories.
Genomic Assays (GA) are budgeted as supply costs, however, NIH only pays F&A on the first $50,000 of GA costs each year.
NIH Policy Statement – F&A Costs .

Review your sponsor guidelines on equipment fabrication, rental or purchases. Review Equipment Inventory Office guidance on Government Furnished Equipment .

The UW Equipment capitalization threshold is $5000. Equipment is excluded from F&A.

Purchasing Equipment

If equipment needs are not definite, probable choices may be listed on a separate sheet and an estimated total shown on the budget page.
Include related costs like shipping and insurance in the equipment costs if allowed by your sponsor.
Sales Tax Exemption – Equipment purchased may qualify for the Machinery and Equipment Tax Exemption or “M&E Exemption”.

Review more information from the Equipment Inventory Office on Acquisitions .

Equipment Fabrication

Describe the equipment that will be fabricated along with a list of items that go into fabrication (e.g. materials, cost center services, salary, etc.). Review Equipment Inventory Office information on Fabrication . F&A is not applied on costs involved in fabricating equipment unless the equipment will be transferred to the sponsor or external entity for use at the end of the project.

Equipment Rental

Each piece of rented equipment should be listed by type, model number, and manufacturer along with the current rental rate of each item. Equipment rental is considered a “service” charge and F&A should be calculated.

Include associated tuition charges for graduate students employed in a 50% FTE appointment for full payroll quarters. Review Current Tuition and Fees from the Office of Planning and Budgeting. Tuition costs are exempt from F&A.

Facilities and Administrative Costs (F&A)

F&A costs are expenses that cannot be specifically identified with a particular project or activity. Also known as “indirect costs” or “overhead,” these costs are for buildings, utilities, services of administrative offices such as purchasing, accounting, payroll, and personnel offices, and other expenses necessary for operations of the institution. Review GIM 13 for more information.

What you need to know to select the correct F&A rate:

How to Determine the Correct Rate
Policy Circumstances
Activity Types
Activity Locations

Multiple Locations

If using SAGE Budget for proposal development, create a separate SAGE Budget Worksheet for each subaward
Each subaward budget should include its direct and F&A costs
Indicate each subawards in the UW budget using the appropriate subaward object class / spend category.
Calculate UW F&A on the first $25,000 of each subawards total costs

Review Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Services covered under F&A costs

F&A WAIVER

In limited situations, the Director of Sponsored Programs may waive F&A. To request a waiver, include the completed F&A waiver form , signed by the PI with Dean and Chair concurrence, in the eGC1 with your proposal materials to the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) .

The University does not waive F&A for for-profit entities.

Budget Justification

Budget Justifications are sometimes called budget narratives or budget details and are an important part of the review process (internally and externally) and details how the sponsor’s funds will be spent. Justify budget costs in detail according to the sponsor instructions. Sponsor scientific reviewers may do a preliminary cost analysis using the budget justification to determine if the science justifies the budgeted cost.

Review the budget justification primer for examples.

Explain estimates or unusual circumstances in your budget justification. Retain supporting documentation, rationales, and sources for estimates, allocation or unusual circumstances along with vendor catalogs or written quotes as support documentation in your local award file.

Example estimation tools, methods, and resources include:

SAGE Budget Module
Payroll system
Anticipated merit increase
Cost of living increase
Travel per diems and other travel cost information
State, federal and international tax information
Vendor and supplier purchasing
Relevant University policy information such as GIM 13 – F&A Rate Agreement or GIM 35 – Institutional Based Salary etc.
Approved & preliminary fringe benefit rates
Sponsor policy
Federal guidelines

If a sponsor does not allow certain costs as a direct cost, they may not be included in the budget.

For example, administrative/clerical costs are not allowed as a direct cost on a federal grant. If you believe your program qualifies for an exception, you must describe how the four criteria for direct charging administrative/clerical costs are met.

OSP’s approval of the eGC1 or the sponsor making an award based on your proposal where the criteria for direct charging administrative/clerical costs were met, does not mean those costs cannot be questioned later.

Cost share is the costs of a sponsored project that the sponsor does NOT pay for.

A sponsor can require cost share and must state this requirement in the funding opportunity. A cost share commitment also occurs when a proposal includes allowable expenses or quantifiable contributions that will not be charged to the sponsor (e.g. effort level of personnel listed with no commensurate request for salary).

Cost share is not expected by federal sponsors if the agency does not include a cost share requirement in the funding opportunity. When not mandatory, the inclusion of a cost share commitment may not be used as a factor in merit review. Voluntary cost share, therefore, should not be presented in the proposal.

Cost sharing is discouraged and leads to:

lower Facilities and Administrative (F&A) rates,
increased administrative burden,
redirection of University resources from other University activities.

When cost share is submitted in a proposal and accepted by the sponsor it becomes a binding commitment. The department/PI is required to provide, monitor and report on the committed resources during the project.

Sponsor approval is required to claim waived F&A as cost share . When direct costs are contributed as cost share, the associated F&A is also considered cost share.

Approvals from other UW units contributing cost share must be on the eGC1 or otherwise documented.

Clinical Trial Budget Resources

Clinical Trials Office (CTO)
Clinical Research Handbook
Industry Clinical Trials

Animal Research Considerations

Costs and budget issues to consider include:

Animal housing costs ( per diems )
Special lab equipment, specialized housing arrangements, or specialized services
Timing considerations: approvals prior to animal acquisition, quarantine, training requirements

The following services are covered under F&A costs:

Training in animal use and handling
Protocol review
Grant/protocol congruence review
Protocol development assistance
Standard veterinary care
Standard animal husbandry

Human Subjects Research Considerations

Consider whether you will need to hire staff, or contract with UW’s Institute for Translational Health Services (ITHS) for staff. Decide whether you will need a staff person to serve as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) liaison because the UW will be the lead for collaborative or multi-site research that is being reviewed by a single IRB.

At all times, it is the PI’s responsibility to ensure all trainees or center activities involving human subjects are carried out under an approved IRB study number.

Subject payment or reimbursement

Include any subject payments or reimbursement of subjects’ expenses. If subjects’ health insurance will be charged for research-related clinical items and services; consider whether the grant will pay for co-pays and deductibles.

IRB review fees

The UW IRBs do not currently charge review fees though this may change for the review of non-UW sites. However, if the research will be reviewed by a non-UW (external) IRB, the external IRB may charge fees. You may need to include IRB review fees in the budget in the following situations:

The UW is the lead site for collaborative or multi-site research and a non-UW single IRB will be used for all sites or institutions involved in the research. For NIH grants, see this NIH Guidance . HSD can also provide guidance on how to identify and estimate costs.
The study is industry-initiated and industry-funded and the sponsor will not pay the fees directly.

Human Subjects Division (HSD) administrative fee

If your research is industry-initiated and industry-funded, you must send the study to an independent IRB (for example WCG IRB or Advarra) for IRB approval instead of the UW IRB. The industry sponsor will pay the IRB review fees charged by the independent IRB, but they are also required to pay HSD an administrative fee. This administrative fee should be included in your budget. See HSD’s information on the HSD Administrative Fee .

Emergency medicine research

Emergency medicine research that requires the special Exception to Informed Consent must conduct community consultation before beginning the study, which requires funds. Consult with HSD for guidance about appropriate activities, based on the nature of the research intervention and the study population. It almost always involves more than public service announcements, news releases and bus placards.

Interpretation and translation

Federal nondiscrimination laws require clinical trials to allow interested and eligible subjects to participate even if they do not speak English. This means that researchers should develop a plan for how translation and interpretation will be provided for interested and eligible subjects. For studies that may have small numbers of these subjects, this may best be handled by including in the budget the cost of retaining an interpretation and translation service that can be called upon as needed.

Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) Considerations

If your project includes hazardous materials review the following considerations.

Take into account costing allocation of materials. Review GIM 23 – Distribution of Costs Across Two or More Sponsored Programs and guidance from Post Award Fiscal Compliance on cost allocation .

Use the Laboratory PPE Assessment Guide to determine the type of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed.
Use the Job Hazard Analysis tool to determine required controls to mitigate risk.
Estimate the cost of ordering PPE and first aid kit through UW Procurement .
Determine the need for chemical spill kit or mercury spill kit .
Use the Occupational Health Recommendation . provided by the EH&S Employee Health Center to determine costs for vaccinations and medical surveillance.
Work with Environmental Health and Safety to accurately calculate and plan for the cost of disposal of biohazardous , chemical , radioactive , and other hazardous waste.

EH&S Services covered under F&A costs

Training (except First Aid)
Chemical waste collection and disposal
Health and safety surveys and monitoring
Assistance meeting health and safety requirements of grant proposals
Radiation use authorizations
Radiation dosimetry and bioassay
Fire prevention services
Fume hood testing
Central SDS library and inventory system
Indoor Air Quality Investigations
Occupational exposure assessments
Respiratory fit-testing
Hazardous material spill management advice and consultation

EH&S Services not covered under F&A costs

• Radioactive Waste Disposal • Calibration of radiation detection instruments

Forms, Tools, and Resources

F&A Waiver Request
Sample Budget Justification
Academic HR: Supplements and Summer Salary
GUIDE: SAGE Budget
Institutional Facts & Rates
Budget Justification Primer
PAFC: Proposal Costs
SAGE: Accessing SAGE
GCA: Cost Share
PAFC: Cost Allocation
PAFC: Requirements to Direct Bill F&A Costs
Cost of Single IRB Review
NSF: Sections of an NSF Proposal, The Budget: Part 1
Subrecipient, Contractor/Vendor, Consultant?
Grants.gov: Tips for Writing a Budget Narrative
NIH: Selecting Correct Budget Format

Policy, Regulation, and Guidance

GIM 35 – Effort Reporting Policy for Sponsored Agreements
GIM 23 – Sponsored Program Costing Policy
GIM 21 – Cost Share on Sponsored Programs
GIM 13 – Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Rates
GIM 03 – Fringe Benefit Rates and Sponsored Projects
Guidelines for Collaborative Research Sharing RCR
Best Practices for Coordination and Set-up of Cost-Shares for Collaborative…
Travel Office: Travel Policies and Procedures
National Research Service Award (NRSA) Postdoctoral Stipend
CORE: Introduction to Sponsored Project Budgets
CORE: SAGE Budget
CORE: Direct Billing of F&A Type Costs

Announcements

How do I document salary cap on proposal budgets?
How do I handle F&A for charter vessels?
What are some things to know about budgeting for the…
Which single F&A rate applies when the Primate Center is…
Who, What, Why – Searching SAM.gov
Will you recommend we create a copy/new sage budget for…

University of Washington Office of Research

Or support offices.

Human Subjects Division (HSD)
Office of Animal Welfare (OAW)
Office of Research (OR)
Office of Research Information Services (ORIS)
Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP)

OR Research Units

Applied Physics Laboratory (APL-UW)
WA National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC)

Research Partner Offices

Corporate and Foundation Relations (CFR)
Enivronmental Health and Safety (EH&S)
Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA)
Institute of Translational Health Sciences (ITHS)
Management Accounting and Analysis (MAA)
Post Award Fiscal Compliance (PAFC)

Collaboration

Centers and Institutes
Collaborative Proposal Development Resources
Research Fact Sheet
Research Annual Report
Stats and Rankings
Honors and Awards
Office of Research

Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories (RCDC)

Table Published: March 31, 2023

The table below displays the annual support level for various research, condition, and disease categories based on grants, contracts, and other funding mechanisms used across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as well as disease burden data published by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).

At the request of Congress, the NIH embarked on a process to provide better consistency and transparency in the reporting of its funded research. This new process, implemented in 2008 through the Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization (RCDC) system, uses sophisticated text data mining (categorizing and clustering using words and multiword phrases) in conjunction with NIH-wide definitions used to match projects to categories. RCDC use of data mining improves consistency and eliminates the wide variability in defining the research categories reported. The definitions are a list of terms and concepts selected by NIH scientific experts to define a research category. The research category levels represent the NIH's best estimates based on the category definitions. These definitions include all aspects of the topic, such as basic, pre-clinical, clinical, biomedical, health services, behavioral, and social research.

In 2016, the NIH added mortality and prevalence data from two sources of consistent and nationally representative disease statistics provided by NCHS/CDC. These data are reported alongside the budgeting categories to provide the public and policymakers with information that is helpful for understanding the NIH research portfolio and its relationship to public health needs. However, NIH believes that the best way to understand disease burdens is by examining patterns in the larger context of multiple methods and measurements, chosen on a case-by-case basis as appropriate for each disease or condition. Further descriptions of these disease statistics can be found here .

The NIH does not expressly budget by category. The annual estimates reflect amounts that change because of science, actual research projects funded, and the NIH budget. The research categories are not mutually exclusive. Individual research projects can be included in multiple categories so amounts depicted within each column of this table do not add up to 100 percent of NIH-funded research.

The table shows historical data for FY 2008 through FY 2022. Estimates for FY 2023 and FY 2024 are based on RCDC actual data. The FY 2024 President's Budget request includes $20 billion in mandatory resources to support pandemic preparedness, including $2.69 billion allocated to NIH for research and development of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against high priority viral families, biosafety and biosecurity, and to expand laboratory capacity and clinical trial infrastructure.

Total Number of Research/Disease Areas: 315 ***

NIH… Turning Discovery Into Health ®

Sample Budget Justifications

Sponsor requirements differ, and sample budget justifications should be seen only as a starting point. Guidelines for sponsor requirements are in the annotated budget justifications. Read the solicitation and the sponsor’s proposal preparation guidelines for each proposal's requirements.

For Research Sponsors

Sample Budget Justification for Non-Federal Research [DOCX] - April 6, 2023
Annotated Budget Justification - Non-Federal Research
Sample Budget Justification for Federal Research [DOCX] - April 6, 2023
Annotated Budget Justification - Federal Research

For Non-Research Sponsors:

Sample Budget Justification for Non-Federal Non-Research [DOCX] - July 29, 2022
Annotated Budget Justification - Non-Federal Non-Research
Sample Budget Justification for Federal Non-Research [DOCX] - July 29, 2022
Annotated Budget Justification - Federal Non-Research
Uniform Guidance Fixed Rate Requirements
F&A Methodology
F&A Components
MIT Use of a de minimis Rate
Fund Account Overhead Rates
Allocation Rates
Determination of On-Campus and Off-Campus Rates
Employee Benefits (EB) Rates
Vacation Accrual Rates
Graduate Research Assistant Tuition Subsidy
Historical RA Salary Levels
MIT Facts and Profile Information
Classification of Sponsored Projects
Types of Sponsored Awards
How Are Sponsored Projects Generated?
Cost Principles and Unallowable Costs
Direct and Indirect Costs
Pre-Proposals / Letters of Intent
MIT Investigator Status
Components of a Proposal
Special Reviews
Applying Through Workspace
Proposal Preparation Checklist
Proposals and Confidential Information
Personnel Costs
Subcontracts and Consultants
Kuali Coeus Approval Mapping
Roles and Responsibilities
Submission of Revised Budgets
Standard Contract Terms and Conditions
Contractual Obligations and Problematic Terms and Conditions
Review and Negotiation of Federal Contract and Grant Terms and Conditions
Industrial Collaboration
International Activities
MIT Export Control - Export Policies
Nondisclosure and Confidentiality Agreements
Negative Confirmation On Award Notices
Routing and Acceptance of the Award Notice
COI and Special Review Hold Notice Definitions
Limiting Long-Term WBS Account Structures
SAP Project WBS Element Conditions
Kuali Coeus Electronic Document Storage (EDS)
Billing Agreements
PI Absence from Project
Cost Transfers
Equipment Threshold
Uniform Guidance and the FAR
MIT Standard Terms and Policies
Guidelines for Charging Faculty Summer Salary
Key Personnel
Limitations on Funds - Federal Contracts
Managing Salary Costs
Monitoring Project Budgets
Monthly Reconciliation and Review
No-Cost Extensions
Reporting Requirements
Return of Unexpended Funds to Foundations
Determining the Sponsor Approved Budget (SAB)
Working With the Sponsor Approved Budget (SAB)
Sponsor Approved Budget (SAB) and Child Account Budgets
Sponsor Approved Budget (SAB) and Prior Approvals
Submitting an SAB Change Request
When a PI Leaves MIT
Research Performance Progress Reports
Closing Out Fixed Price Awards
Closeout of Subawards
Record Retention
Early Termination
Reporting FAQs
Using SciENcv
AFOSR No-Cost Extension Process
Terms and Conditions
New ONR Account Set Ups
Department of Defense Disclosure Guidance
Department of Energy / Office of Science Disclosure Guidance
Introduction to Industrial Sponsors
General Considerations for Industrial Proposals
SRC Guidance to Faculty Considering Applying for SRC Funding
Find Specific RFP Information
Industrial Proposal Checklist
Proposal Formats
Special Requirements
Deadline Cycles
Model Proposals
Non-Competitive Industrial Proposals
Master and Alliance Agreements With Non-Standard Proposal Processes
Template Agreements
New Consortium Agreements
Competitive Industrial Proposals
Collaborative (No-cost) Research Agreements
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Disclosure Guidance
NASA Graduate Research Fellowship Programs
NASA PI Status and Definitions
NIH Checklists and Preparation Guides
National Institutes of Health Disclosure Guidance
Human Subjects and NIH Proposals
NIH Data Management and Sharing
NIH Research Performance Progress Reports
Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) proposals
MIT Guidance Regarding the NSF CAREER Program
Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Supplements
National Science Foundation Disclosure Guidance
NSF Proposals: Administrative Review Stage
NSF Collaborations
NSF Pre-Award and Post-Award Actions
NSF Reporting
NSF Frequently Asked Questions
NSF Safe and Inclusive Working Environment
Process, Roles and Responsibilities
What Is Allowable/Eligible Cost Sharing?
MIT’s Preferred Cost Sharing Funds
Third-Party Cost Sharing
Showing Cost Sharing in a Proposal Budget
Sponsor Specific Instructions Regarding Location in the Proposal
Funding F&A Costs as Cost Sharing
Using Faculty Effort for Cost Sharing
Information about Completing the Cost Sharing Template
NSF Cost Sharing Policy
Tracking/Reporting Cost Sharing
Special Cost Sharing Topics
International Activities Examples
Rubicon Fellowships
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships
Criteria for Subrecipients
Subawards at Proposal
Requesting New Subawards
Managing Subawards
RAS Subaward Team Contacts
Funding and Approval
Proposal Phase
Award Set-up
Monitoring Research During Project Period
Closeout Phase
Voluntary Cost Sharing
Sponsor-Specific Guidance
Audits and Auditors
Upcoming Trainings and Events
Research Administration Practices (RAP)
NCURA Virtual Workshops and Webinars
Guide to RA Resources and Training
Career Paths
Newsletters
Tools and Systems
Award Closeout & Audits
Award Setup
Cost Sharing
Export Control
Financial Conflict of Interest
Kuali Coeus
Project Monitoring
Proposal Preparation & Submission
Research Sub Awards
Research Administration Email Lists
RAS Operations
VPR Research Administration Organization Chart
By department
By administrator
Research Administrator Day
News & Announcements
Onsite searching on the VPR public websites

What Is Budget Allocation and How to Allocate Budget Correctly

George Fullerton

Strategy & Operations

Get Our Financial Planning Blueprint

Your budgeting process requires strong collaboration from department heads and executive leadership. Yet if you’re only going to each department once, asking them what they need, and simply saying, “Here you go” once you get executive approval, then you haven’t done enough testing around your top-line goal metrics.

If you want to pave a path toward sustainable growth, you need to embrace agility and proactivity — and one way to do that is through budget allocation. Running a budget variance analysis and rolling forecast helps you set baselines and growth goals, but these processes can still take weeks to gather and manipulate data from multiple departments and source systems.

Here, we explore how quarterly budget allocation creates a path for more agile, strategic planning and spend.

Table of Contents

What Are Budget Allocations?

Budget allocations refer to the amount of money each department receives from the general fund to execute their strategic plans. Budget allocation breaks department spend down into an approved maximum amount each department can spend per resource, whether it’s on software, contractor or freelance assistance, or ad spend for a marketing campaign.

The Importance of Allocating Budgets

Budgeting, at its core, is an optimization and constraint problem. You need to optimize operational efficiency yet understand your constraints to ensure ample runway and team support as you track the company’s growth trajectory.

You dictate the company roadmap based on expected return on investment (ROI), which has to tie out at the department level. The R&D department is integral for Seed and Series A companies, yet once the product is ready to launch, you want to allocate budget to your sales and marketing teams. Once the budget goes toward sales and marketing, and you begin acquiring customers, you now have new constraints that impact your budget: your customer acquisition cost (CAC), CAC payback period , and your annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Budget allocation fuels overall efficiency, in that department leaders don’t need to ask for approval to expense individual tools, assign projects to freelancers, or add seats for software. By allocating budget to general categories, each department can cherry-pick when and how to apply the budget. Of course, departments need to ensure they use their budget. While saving money is generally seen as positive, departments may not receive the same budget allotment in the next cycle — which may be detrimental to department-level goals and planning.

If departments experience strain, such as requiring more seats on a specific tool or running into production issues, you run into employee retention issues that stem from operational efficiency and satisfaction. To hire more employees costs more, which digs into your runway. By keeping an eye on your goals and constraints, you can then proactively figure out where you’ll get the highest ROI.

How to Optimize Budget Allocations in 6 Steps

Knowing your startup costs (for each employee and desk space), fixed costs, and variable costs and how they impact your total budget is one thing — but to optimize budget management and allocation requires ample cross-collaboration to keep goals top of mind and realistic.

Your budget allocation strategy will depend on your industry, your growth stage, and overall macroeconomic environment. But here’s how you can optimize your budget allocation with more strategic and agile decision-making from everyone involved regardless of stage.

1. Set Company Goals and Priorities

While knowing your total budget is technically the first step, the real strategic insights begin with a simple question: What are your North Star metrics?

Naming your company goals and priorities is the key to driving how you think about and create departmental budgets across the company.

In ideal market conditions, many executive leaders say that their top priority is to grow at all costs. Yet during a market downturn, priorities shift toward keeping a closer eye on burn and preserving runway. Depending on how those priorities shake out, there’s two ways to approach budgeting:

Growth goals: A focus on growth goals requires high confidence in achieving them. Your growth goal is the starting point, then you work backwards to allocate your budget to achieve that goal. A focus on top-line revenue growth leads to creating a sales and marketing budget around cost per lead and win rates/conversions. The question becomes “How much do I have to spend in order to get this growth goal?” which then spits out your sales and marketing budget.
Capital efficiency : A more conservative approach begins by asking, “How much can I spend in order to only burn X number of dollars a month, or to make sure I have runway for 24 months into the future?” You can also focus on a certain set of unit economics, meaning you’d build your budget to hit a particular CAC number or set a payback period within a particular period of time.

Regardless of your approach, tying your budget back to goals (i.e. strategic budgeting ) and target metrics is critical. If you believe growth goals are most important, for example, then your ROI on spending additional sales and marketing dollars could be higher than hiring a different engineer where you may have a longer-term payoff.

2. Set Your Constraints

Your goals establish whether you’re approaching budget allocations from a bottom-line or top-line growth perspective. Utilizing both allows you to gain a sense of customer retention (with your top line) alongside expenses (bottom line), which helps you strike the right balance or priorities. Applying constraints to your goals allows you to set realistic expectations.

Company-wide, you want to keep an eye on runway and burn multiple. Yet when diving deeper into department budgets, you’ll need to focus on different metrics. For example, CAC payback period impacts your sales and marketing budget.

Your CAC payback period sets a precedent for how long potential customers stay in the sales funnel. Incorporating sales funnel metrics into this equation provides invaluable insights — and setting constraints around your payback period requires sales and marketing to scrutinize and optimize these metrics within the funnel.

3. Check Your Goals Around Budget Allocation Benchmarks

Your company’s growth stage impacts where your goals and constraints stay relevant and applicable to ensure strategic growth. OpenView runs a SaaS Benchmarks Survey that explores budgetary benchmarks in correlation with your growth stage. Here’s their chart from 2021:

openview financial and operating benchmarks by ARR chart

OpenView SaaS Benchmarks Survey 2021 Results, courtesy of Curtis Townshend , Senior Director of Growth at OpenView.

The top row indicates the stage of the business per million dollar revenue. The numbers in bold represent a median, with percentages assigned for how much each company would allocate per category. For example, a company with $1-2.5 million in revenue would allocate 30% of their budget to sales and marketing and 40% in R&D, while aiming for 75% in gross margins.

While the above table does not mention a ratio for general and administrative costs , the standard spend for SaaS companies is about 10-12% of your total budget.

After you establish your goals and constraints to ensure financial efficiency , you can approach your budget and measure against these benchmarks.

4. Establish Your Headcount Plans

Headcount accounts for 70% of overall company spend in SaaS, and each department has different ROI.

Sales and marketing headcount should directly produce returns — but to drive the sales and marketing machine, you need to continuously spend. You need to ensure you have a strong control and understanding of your product-market fit to keep the engine running. If the company is not at the point of understanding the output of each dollar spent across the sales funnel, the budget should focus on product or internal system process data.

Work closely with human resources partners to decide how much to set aside for workforce growth in every department. Decide how many full-time hires you’ll need in the next budget year, where it might be appropriate to hire out to contractors, and where your stakeholders need the most help.

5. Conduct Scenario Planning with Mosaic

Optimizing budget allocation helps you optimize ROI of operational initiatives by forcing you to constantly check where you think you’ll get the most out of your dollars and how that spend relates to company-level goals.

Mosaic’s financial modeling and scenario planning tool integrates with your source systems to offer scenario analysis that elevates the strategy behind your budget allocation. Scenario analysis examples include looking at how cutting a fixed cost (like office space) impacts your runway, or how your product release plan may hinge on engineer headcount or come down to asking, “ How much should you spend on ads to promote the product — and when?”

Being able to quickly see how adjustments to specific budgets affects your downstream metrics is extremely helpful. Mosaic syncs in real time so you can easily integrate your historical and actual data into your scenarios. If you want to see how increasing spend by $500,000 impacts your sales and marketing budget, you can simply apply the change in one model to see how it affects your CAC, CAC payback, burn multiple, and other key metrics.

You don’t need to build entirely new models or scenarios — instead, you can tweak your budget assumptions in different scenarios and see the immediate downstream effects on the metrics that you want to employ as your constraints.

Keep in mind that your strongest models align on two or three metrics: Too many inputs leads to an overlap in ideology, which causes clutter and slows you down.

6. Make Cross-Department Collaboration a One-Stop Shop

The budgeting process is notorious for multiple Excel sheets and communication across multiple emails or Zoom meetings. Mosaic allows you to create department-level dashboards that align leaders and give them one place to stay updated on budget allocation and spend.

department level budgeting dashboard in Mosaic

Department leaders can look at a graph or table in Mosaic’s variance analysis software to see where their budget currently is and where it was spent. Mosaic can immediately generate a budget analysis that allows them to make strategic decisions on what they want to do with their remaining budget or where they need to cut back to hit their budget for the month or quarter.

Mosaic also allows reports to be easily accessible for department leaders. Since Mosaic offers real-time updates, finance teams can help establish one report that automatically updates so department leaders can make plans with actual numbers. This leads to not just saving time between going back and forth to establish numbers, but more proactive decision-making that keeps leader engagement high into understanding the “why” behind their budgeting line items.

Focus more on telling the story behind your numbers with this Financial Waterfall Template Bundle.

When to review budget allocations — and why you’re not doing it enough.

A “one and done” annual budget process doesn’t work for high-growth companies. A more adaptable or flexible budget approach is essential, especially for those experiencing rapid changes. Keeping it to even twice a year causes everyone to miss out on key drivers for overall success. Proactive budget development should happen at least on a quarterly schedule, where you can change resource allocation based on historical data from the previous year to last quarter.

While establishing a quarterly financial plan review is good in practice, you also need to allow for some flexibility. Here are some other reasons to perform financial audits on budget allocation:

Macroeconomic events. Anything from a market downturn or industry collapse signals immediate action. Budget allocation should transition into a monthly schedule to stay as ahead as possible.
Not hitting topline goals. You may need to redistribute your budget to ensure you get as high of an ROI as possible. You may need to allocate more budget toward supporting sales and marketing than hiring another engineer, for example.
Runway cost. If you predict that you’ll burn $5 million, but realize that headcount needs to increase in the second half of the year, you need to factor that cost in. You also need to keep track of your burn and when it occurs: If it increases from $2 to $3 million in one month due to headcount, you carry this cost throughout the rest of the year. You can then take budget away to make up the costs — it’s much harder to try and get the budget back once people start spending it.
Capital efficiency metrics are off. Analyzing capital efficiency metrics like burn multiple on a regular basis can help you proactively address inefficiencies in the business. Drill down into your expenses and see how you can reevaluate spend.

Embrace a Smarter Way to Allocate Budgets with Mosaic

Mosaic offers preloaded, out-of-the-box metrics, templates, and dashboards that allow you to cut the budget allocation and planning process from two weeks to two days. Mosaic offers a SaaS acquisition metrics dashboard that considers CAC and CAC payback alongside other important metrics, like your SaaS magic number , to gain granular insights that craft your company’s growth narrative. You can also customize financial reports to include other key metrics, such as your burn multiple and runway, to help establish and keep your benchmarks in mind.

With Mosaic, budget planning can be a quicker, more collaborative, strategic process that keeps your company moving along toward its goals. Request a personalized demo today .

Give Department Leaders Deep Financial Insights for Better Budgeting

Budget allocation FAQs

Why is budget allocation important.

Understanding your budget allocations and appropriations can help your company maximize ROI. Knowing where your money goes ahead of time reduces discretionary spending and leaves a strategic roadmap for spending and expenditures . And, since this is done ahead of time, departments can run more efficiently on their allocated budget.

What is an example of a budget allocation?

An example of budget allocation is a predetermined percentage of company funding that goes to research and development, or sales and marketing. This can be done monthly, per quarter, or per fiscal year . The percentage of the allocated budget is based on importance, productivity, company profits, and other considerations. If the department needs more funding, they can submit a budget request , but ultimately, the budget allocation should be taken care of beforehand.

What is the best way to allocate your budget?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here. To optimize your budget allocation you need to proactively and periodically review how you’re allocating resources and reassess your priorities. What are your goals? What are your budget constraints? What ROI are you getting on your current allocations? These are all questions you need to ask in collaboration with different teams and departments to ensure your budgets are allocated properly at all times.

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Mastering Budget Allocation Management for Finance Teams

Effectively managing budget allocations is crucial for the financial health and sustainability of any organization. Finance teams play a pivotal role in overseeing budget allocation , ensuring that spending aligns with strategic objectives and financial plans. In this article, we explore best practices for finance teams in the realm of budget allocation management.

Regular Monitoring of Budget Allocations

Finance teams should establish a routine for monitoring budget allocations to ensure adherence to the predefined spending plans. Regular reviews enable teams to identify deviations early on and take corrective action promptly. This practice helps prevent overspending and ensures that financial resources are allocated efficiently.

Creation of a Comprehensive Spending Record

Maintaining a detailed spending record is a fundamental practice for effective budget allocation management. This record should encompass all purchase orders and bills, providing a comprehensive overview of financial transactions. By having a centralized record, finance teams can easily track expenditures, compare them against budget allocations, and identify any discrepancies.

Comparison of Spending Against Budget Allocations

A key aspect of budget allocation management is the ongoing comparison of actual spending against the allocated budget. This involves regularly assessing the spending record and identifying areas where expenditures exceed or fall short of the budgeted amounts. This proactive approach allows finance teams to address budget variances promptly and make informed decisions to reallocate resources if necessary.

Promotion of Accountability

Creating a spending record not only facilitates tracking and comparison but also promotes accountability within the organization. Finance teams can use the spending record to verify whether procurement activities were conducted in accordance with established protocols. This transparency enhances accountability among teams and encourages responsible spending practices throughout the organization.

Insights for Future Budget Planning

A well-maintained spending record serves as a valuable resource for future budget planning. Finance teams can analyze historical spending patterns, identify trends, and use this information to refine future budget allocations. Understanding past expenditures provides insights into areas of potential optimization and aids in creating more accurate and realistic budgets.

Highlighting Saving Opportunities

Monitoring budget allocations and maintaining a spending record can uncover saving opportunities for the organization. By identifying areas where expenditures are consistently below budget, finance teams can explore cost-saving initiatives or reallocate resources to areas with higher priority. This strategic approach contributes to financial efficiency and optimization.

Collaborative Budget Review

Effective budget allocation management involves collaboration among different departments and teams within the organization. Finance teams should work closely with department heads and managers to review budget allocations, discuss spending needs, and ensure alignment with organizational goals. This collaborative effort enhances communication and fosters a shared understanding of budget priorities.

In the dynamic landscape of business, mastering budget allocation management is essential for financial stability and growth. Finance teams, through regular monitoring, comprehensive spending records, and collaborative efforts, can navigate the complexities of budget allocation successfully. By promoting accountability, gaining insights for future planning, and identifying saving opportunities, finance teams become key contributors to the overall financial health of the organization. Adopting these best practices ensures that budget allocation becomes a strategic tool for optimizing resources and achieving long-term financial objectives .

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Iran J Public Health
v.52(9); 2023 Sep
PMC10682572

Budgeting in Healthcare Systems and Organizations: A Systematic Review

Abbas homauni.

1. Department of Health Management and Economics, School of Medicine, Aja University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Nader Markazi-Moghaddam

2. Critical Care Quality Improvement Research Center, Shahid Modarres Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Ali Mosadeghkhah

3. Department of Endocrinology, Aja University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran

Majid Noori

4. Infectious Diseases Research Center, Aja University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Kourosh Abbasiyan

Sanaz zargar balaye jame, associated data.

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Background:

Budgeting is the process resource allocation to produce the best output according to the revenue levels involved. Among the constraints that healthcare organizations, including hospitals, both in the public and private sectors, grapple with is budgetary constraints. Therefore, cost control and resource management should be considered in healthcare organizations under such circumstances.

We aimed to identify methods of budgeting in healthcare systems and organizations as a systematic review. To extract and analyze the data, a form was designed by the researcher to define budgeting methods proposed in the literature and to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and dimensions. The search was conducted in Google Scholar, Web of science, Pub med and Scopus databases covering the period 1990–2022.

Overall, 33 articles were included in the study for extraction and final analysis. The study results were reported in four main themes: healthcare system budgeting, capital budgeting, global budgeting, and performance-based budgeting.

Conclusion:

Each budgeting approach has its own pros and cons and requires meeting certain requirements. These approaches are selected and implemented depending on each country’s infrastructure and conditions as well as its organizations. These infrastructures need to be thoroughly examined before implementing any budgeting method, and then a budgeting method should be selected accordingly.

Introduction

A budget is a key lever in organizational planning and management ( 1 ). It can be defined as an estimate of revenues/expenditures over a given time ( 2 ). Budgeting is the process of resource allocation to produce the best outputs according to the revenue levels involved ( 3 ). If done properly, budgeting can help managers better manage and control the organization ( 4 ). As a management planning/control tool, budgeting helps coordinate activity concentration and control in organizations. Budgeting shows financial management orientation to organizations. Therefore, every organization has revenue and expenses that need budget and budgeting ( 5 ).

The health (healthcare) sector is considered as one of the basic sectors in the process of economic ( 6 ) and social development in each country ( 7 ).

The bulk of countries’ budgets goes to the healthcare system. About 10% of the GDP of many countries is allocated to the healthcare system ( 8 ). Moreover, examining the costs of healthcare systems and organizations indicates an increase in the costs allocated to healthcare services ( 9 ). This can be due to several reasons, including population aging and the adoption of state-of-the-art healthcare technologies ( 10 ). The improved quality of healthcare services is a double-edged sword, both increasing life expectancy and making the aging population in need of more healthcare, which, in turn, increases the cost of healthcare services. Accordingly, policymakers are increasingly motivated to reduce healthcare costs ( 11 ).

Numerous studies have been conducted on healthcare cost control over the past three decades, and various economic models have been developed for this purpose, especially in hospitals. These models are more focused on cost structure, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, and cost-benefit analysis. Numerous measures have been taken to control the cost of healthcare systems and organizations in recent years, including changing accounting approaches, a modified approach to budgeting, and service cost control in hospitals and other healthcare organizations ( 12 ).

Among the constraints that healthcare organizations, including hospitals, both in the public and private sectors, grapple with is budgetary constraints ( 13 ). Therefore, cost control and resource management should be considered in healthcare organizations under such circumstances. They need to consider budget/resource management such that the quality of healthcare services is not affected as their actions directly affect human health ( 14 ).

Various budgeting methods have been addressed in many previous studies In global budgeting, a certain amount of budget is allocated to services offered to a given population for a certain time (usually one year). The global budgeting method has its advantages and disadvantages, which will be mentioned below. Many studies have evaluated the performance of the global budgeting approach and its practical results ( 15 – 18 ).

Furthermore, the capital budgeting approach is employed to meet capital needs in healthcare organizations ( 19 ). Surgical operations are becoming more complex and reliant on specialized equipment and techniques, necessitating increased investment by hospitals and other healthcare organizations ( 20 ). During normal periods, a large portion of hospitals’ capital budget and investment decisions relating to the capital raising practices required to provide replacement/upgrade costs for outdated equipment and facilities. In many hospitals, specifically older hospitals, a lot of capital is needed to upgrade the existing physical space, including facilities and equipment, reduced liquidity and increased the debt ratio with financial problems, and the bankruptcy of these hospitals. Therefore, funding seems to be essential for healthcare organizations, especially hospitals ( 21 ).

Performance-based budgeting (also called program budgeting) is another budgeting approach that has recently gained popularity. It is a planning, budgeting, and evaluation system that emphasizes the association between budget spent and outcomes. It has been widely discussed in the budgeting literature. This approach has certain features, such as flexible budgeting associated with performance goals and program outcome measures ( 22 ).

Despite all efforts to improve budgeting practices in the healthcare systems and organizations, the healthcare system still seems to suffer from increased costs and inefficient resource utilization. We aimed to explore budgeting methods, dimensions, and strengths and weaknesses, as well as to provide several solutions to improve it.

We aimed to identify methods of budgeting in healthcare systems and organizations as a systematic review. For this purpose, the keywords Hospital OR teaching hospital OR poly clinic OR clinic OR public hospital OR non-profit hospital OR health OR health system OR health care system OR healthcare OR health service OR healthcare service AND budget OR budgeting OR budgeting model OR cost estimation OR income estimation OR revenue estimation OR financial management OR capital budgeting OR global budgeting OR periodic financial forecast OR resource allocation OR budget planning OR budget process OR budget format OR budget framework OR budgeting planning OR operational budgeting OR operational budgeting model OR budget forecast OR operational based budgeting OR zero based budgeting OR budgeting component OR operational budgeting component OR performance budgeting OR personnel budgeting OR equipment budgeting OR employee budgeting OR budget allocation OR zero based budget OR contract-based budgeting OR performance-based budgeting OR budgeting steps OR activity-based budgeting OR population budgeting OR facility budgeting OR case-mix budgeting OR global budgeting OR line by line budgeting OR policy budgeting OR project budgeting, as well as the Google Scholar, Pub Med, Web of Science, and Scopus databases were used. The period of studies was from 1990-2022. The final papers were selected for inclusion in a three-step process. In the first step, the titles of all articles were reviewed, and articles unrelated to the research subject were excluded. In the second stage, the abstracts were studied, and irrelevant articles were excluded. Finally, the remaining articles were read in full text, and articles tailored to the research purpose were included in the study.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Articles and reports published from 1990–2022
Studies written in Persian or English
Articles and reports on budgeting in the healthcare system or healthcare organizations
Articles and reports on the budgeting process, budgeting approaches, and their strengths and weaknesses

Articles that did not have the above characteristics were excluded from the study.

Data extraction/analysis method

To extract and analyze the data, a form was designed by the researcher to define budgeting methods proposed in the literature and to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and dimensions. The information on each budgeting method was then put on the form. Fig. 1 illustrates the article selection process:

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is IJPH-52-1889-g001.jpg

article selection process

Overall, 33 articles were included in the study for extraction and final analysis. Table 1 lists various budgeting methods identified in the literature:

Various methods of budgeting in healthcare systems

Budgeting in healthcare systems

To ensure health budgeting is in line with health priorities, health planning beneficiaries must be strategically involved in the process and be prepared to support it ( 23 ). Department and operating unit managers in healthcare organizations are regarded as the main budget-makers (budgeteers) of these organizations, involved in budgeting ( 24 ). A standard budget cycle consists of four phases:

Preparation and submission;
Approval (authorization);
Audit and evaluation (authorization) ( 25 ).

The following principles must be followed for successful budget planning and execution in healthcare systems and organizations:

Employees’ and managers’ participation in the budgeting process can enhance their commitment to budget execution ( 26 ).Part of the budgeting process should be delegated to managers to do budgeting with their employees’ assistance ( 27 ).The need for identifying and preventing various biases in the budgeting process in hospitals and healthcare organizations, including unintentional cognitive bias (due to cognitive errors, information asymmetry, and limited information), intentional bias (upward bias and reciprocity bias), and blame avoidance approach ( 28 ).One of the possible errors when budgeting is mere cost control and disregarding service quality. Cost control is a double-edged sword, leading to a decline in service quality and customer dissatisfaction ( 29 ).

Budget performance feedback should be provided to managers and officials periodically so that they can timely identify budget variance and modify their performance ( 26 ). Budgeters should consider their stakeholder satisfaction when budgeting because stakeholders are the organization’s key customers whose dissatisfaction can significantly damage the organization ( 30 ). Among the criteria used in the studies are national priorities (preferences), essential services, historical budget, health needs, the feasibility analysis of international priorities (preferences), personal relationships, and generation of income ( 31 ).

Table 2 lists the methods/approaches identified in a healthcare system as well as the dimensions/characteristics and practical results of implementing each of them.

Budgeting methods/approaches in the healthcare system

This study analyzed the different budgeting methods used in healthcare systems. Various studies have examined the method of global budgeting. In Roberts study, the application of the global budgeting method does not directly affect the increase of primary healthcare and the decrease of hospital services ( 16 ). Cost control measures resulting from the global budget with a significant impact on physician performance included lowering the average prescription drug costs for outpatients and limiting access to examinations, drugs, and surgeries. Decreased patient satisfaction was associated with decreased admission of patients with deteriorating conditions, decreased access to commercial drugs, and increased patients’ total cost due to an increased number of referrals ( 36 ). In Berenson study, maintaining services quality through executing global budgeting was emphasized As Petrou study, also global budgeting execution must be accompanied by explicit service coverage guidelines ( 33 ). In Dredge Report, the benefits of global budgeting were introduced, which in this sense is consistent with Petrou study. As in the previous study, this study also discussed applying historical, normative, and per capita approaches.

This study enumerates other benefits of global budgeting, including the elimination of inessential services and improved service coordination/planning, in addition to its previous benefits ( 32 ).

Global budgets can provide strong financial incentives for cost control. Properly structured, the global budget can guarantee some degree of financial stability for hospitals, especially in rural areas. This study also enumerates global budgeting services, including covered services, covered patient population, solutions to ensure third-party payer participation, base year budgeting method, updating base year budget in the next taxable years, identifying any base budget adjustment, budget management method. The mechanism for calculating market share changes, monitoring hospital performance and the general system, and developing/implementing a contract between the global budget hospitals and the institution (s) that administer the global budget system. One research suggestion was that pay for performance (P4P) could be increased by implementing supplemental incentive programs to ensure that service quality is not compromised by providers trying to control prices ( 34 ).

GB could further contribute to reducing healthcare costs and increasing healthcare quality compared to FFS. Regarding service volume, while the length of stay (LOS) and monthly hospital admissions decreased the number of drugs in each case and cases containing antibiotics remained unchanged ( 39 ). Moreover, executing global budgeting in Maryland was associated with ED admissions significantly reduced compared to hospitals under payment service structure ( 40 ). Although the results of another study showed that, the global budget system was associated with longer length of stay, higher healthcare costs, and higher healthcare quality in patients treated for acute pancreatitis ( 41 ).

Another approach to budgeting is capital budgeting, addressed in four studies, the results of Ho study showed that the repayment method was the main criterion for evaluating long-term hospital investment projects in a sample of small hospitals in the United States. There are also a considerable number of hospitals whose approach seems to be incorrectly dealing with the effects of inflation. On the other hand, sample hospitals seem to be aware of the need for tangible and intangible costs/benefits ( 42 ).

Physicians have an important role in developing and validating offers in most healthcare systems. Physicians who play do not significantly contribute to the success of their preferred hospital, direct investment costs, and budget deficit compensation do not affect healthcare systems in multiple institutions ( 21 ).

As hospitals are likely to benefit from multiple funding sources to meet their general capital budget, the projects evaluated by them are expected to cover the average cost of capital (called weighted average cost of capital (WACC)). WACC refers to the rate at which obstacles must be overcome before being accepted by the finance team and implemented by the company. The severity of the COVID-19 crisis is likely to be much greater in smaller hospitals with less access to different financial resources rather than larger hospitals or hospital systems likely to have significant financial resources and good relationships with financial service providers for financing ( 44 ).

Another approach to budgeting is performance-based budgeting. In this approach, the technical elements of performance-based budgeting are setting short-term, medium-term, and strategic goals. In the early 2000s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) defined the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as a framework for guiding public sector planning and budgeting, especially in low- and middle-income countries. One of the lessons learned from the Kenyan experience is that LMICs that adopt PPBs should develop clear guidelines for implementing and updating financial management systems to align with the PBB framework ( 46 ). The importance of MTEF in performance-based budgeting was addressed ( 3 ). It is difficult to align planning and budgeting in Kenya. This can be attributed to several factors, including poor oversight of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, institutionalized segregation of rapidly changing planning/budgeting, planning and budgeting environments, lack of reliable goal-setting data, and poor involvement of key stakeholders in the process. Including a top-down approach to goal-setting. Increasing the effectiveness of performance-based budgeting requires the institutional integration of planning and budgeting processes into a shared cycle/framework with shared reporting lines, data recovery, and local input for information on appropriate and realistic settings ( 49 ).

Flexibility with responsiveness, are the key features of performance-based budgeting. Public healthcare budgets and expenditures could be categorized and clearly described descriptively. A framework can also be provided to support program budgeting and performance measurement. Public health policymakers/specialists may then initiate an important discussion to prioritize actions and outcomes ( 50 ).

The steps of setting up a performance-based budgeting system were described, including changing the accounting approach from cash to accrual, developing a cost price system, executing performance-based budgeting, productivity management, evidence-based analysis, and decision making ( 47 ). Moreover, despite adequate admission and cost-effective execution of performance-based budgeting, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) lacks the necessary capabilities and authority. SUMS lacked sufficient infrastructure to execute performance-based budgeting while conducting research ( 51 ).

Managers and heads of operational units and departments are considered the main decision-makers of hospitals that should be involved in the budgeting process ( 28 ). The involvement of budget executors in budgeting was also discussed in one study ( 25 ). The importance of participation in budgeting was discussed in another study. The budget participation (followed by budget control and feedback) and budget complexity had the greatest and least impact on budget performance in Kenyan state-owned hospitals ( 26 ). In Kenya, delegation of authority allows local prioritization and public participation in planning and budgeting in the healthcare sector, leading to an increase in equal opportunities for local resource allocation. In this study, health policymakers were recommended to develop a broad understanding of countries’ political context while designing and implementing technical strategies for decentralizing the healthcare sector ( 27 ). In the budgeting process, providing budget feedback to department/unit managers and supervisors is second only to participation. Since budget feedback information is effective in monitoring, controlling, and encouraging budget managers, budget feedback will positively affect managers’ budget incentives (sense of success and promotion). The presence of a division manager in budgetary planning indicates the high capability of the organization for budget execution. In addition, the advice of the division manager and the consideration of his views in budgetary planning will lead to an increase in the positive/acceptable attitude towards budget participation, which will have a positive effect on the budget incentive ( 24 ).

The stages of budgeting in healthcare systems in Ghana were described in Arthur study, including informing the goals, identifying limiting factors, initial budgeting based on goals and limiting factors, budget negotiation (a participatory process), budget approval, budget participation, and budget management ( 29 ).

Eight budgeting methods in healthcare organizations, including population-based, facility-based, case mix-based, global, line-by-line, policy-based, project-based, and ministerial discretion. ( 31 ).

The following conclusions were drawn from a study:

- Hospital-level prioritization can be improved by aligning budgeting and planning, combining the clear role of decision-making structures, and applying explicit and formal decision-making criteria.
- Hospital-level prioritization methods can be improved in terms of efficiency and equality in decision making and yielding intermediate results, including stakeholder satisfaction/understanding, changed priorities, and implemented decisions.
- Cooperation includes the following conditional democratic principles: participation/empowerment of stakeholders, transparency, use of evidence, reconsideration, and application/combination of community values. It can improve hospital-level prioritization practices ( 23 ).

The healthcare system is one of the most expensive sectors in any country; therefore, it is necessary to monitor closely this sector’s costs. The experience of different countries has shown that just increasing the costs of the healthcare system does not necessarily lead to improving public health. Therefore, the method of budget allocation to different health departments is very important. Healthcare systems and organizations use different budgeting approaches, three of described in this study. Each budgeting method has its own pros and cons and must meet certain requirements. Each of these methods is selected and implemented depending on the infrastructure and conditions of each country and its organizations. For this purpose, before implementing any of the methods above, these infrastructures are first analyzed, and then one of the abovementioned methods is selected accordingly.

Journalism Ethics considerations

Ethical issues (Including plagiarism, informed consent, misconduct, data fabrication and/or falsification, double publication and/or submission, redundancy, etc.) have been completely observed by the authors.

Availability of data and materials

Acknowledgements.

We are grateful to the study participants for their time and viewpoints. This study was not supported by any financial sources

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

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Home Publications University Indicative Funding Allocations 2024-25

University Indicative Funding Allocations 2024-25

SFC/AN/05/2024

18 April 2024

Announcement of indicative funding allocations for universities for Academic Year (AY) 2024-25.

Principals/Directors and Board Secretaries of Scotland’s universities, and the general public.

Richard Maconachie FCCA Director of Finance Finance & Funding 0131 313 6511 [email protected]

Supporting Documentation

Purpose/background

I am writing to announce Scottish Funding Council (SFC) decisions on the indicative funding allocations for universities for the forthcoming Academic Year (AY) 2024-25.
SFC provides indicative funding allocations to help universities plan for the forthcoming AY. We have engaged closely with the Scottish Government through the funding allocation process to ensure that our funding principles align with Ministerial policy priorities.
The indicative allocations set out in this announcement are based on the Scottish Government’s Financial Year (FY) 2024-25 Budget , which was approved by the Scottish Parliament on 27 February 2024.
We have engaged with several key sector groups in developing these indicative allocations. Following further consultation with the sector, we will publish final allocations by the end of May 2024.

Scottish Budget 2024-25

The Scottish Government’s 2024-25 Budget set a university resource (revenue) budget for Financial Year (FY) 2024-25 of £760.7 million (m). Excluding the £20m transitional funding, which was initially part of the FY 2023-24 budget, this represents a decrease of £28.5m (-3.6%) from FY 2023-24.
The University capital budget, including research and innovation funding, has been set at £356.9m; an increase of £16.2m (4.8%) from FY 2023-24. This budget includes funding for Innovation Centres, the detail of which is not included in this announcement.
This is a challenging funding settlement, which necessitates difficult choices. We have sought to balance a range of priorities for universities – fulfilling our statutory mission and duties, aligning with the Scottish Government’s stated priorities, and taking into account sector and stakeholder feedback, including the need to:
Continue to secure opportunities for Scottish-domiciled students and ensure that any reduction in funded student places does not disadvantage first year Scottish applicants, taking into account the Scottish Government’s guidance that no additional funded places should be removed in AY 2024-25 beyond the 1,289 places that were introduced in AY 2020-21 to support learners following changes to the SQA assessment process in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue to promote widening access to higher education, in line with Scottish Government policy.
Continue to embed Graduate Apprenticeships and other work-based learning opportunities within our core provision, in line with Scottish Government expectations.
Maintain the ‘unit of resource’ for publicly funded student places (i.e. the amount of teaching funding – ‘the price’ – per funded place) to protect the quality of the student’s teaching and learning experience and to support them to succeed in their studies.
Enhance investment in research and innovation.
Take account of the impact of changes in funding allocations to an institution’s viability, with particular attention on Scotland’s world-class small specialist institutions.
The key points in this indicative funding announcement are:
Teaching funding for AY 2024-25 has reduced by £28.5m (-3.8%), in line with the reduction in the Scottish Government’s budget for FY 2024-25.
Research and innovation funding has increased by £12.6m (4.2%).
Capital funding has increased by £2.6m (10.2%).

Funds allocated for AY 2024-25

This announcement focuses on the indicative allocation of funding to universities for AY 2024-25. In line with this approach, Table 1 provides a summary of the institutional funding announced in this publication.

Teaching funding

Teaching funding allocated to universities for AY 2024-25, has been set at £715.2m, a reduction of £26.7m (-3.6%). This includes the Main Teaching Grant and other teaching grants/funding elements. Indicative allocations are shown in Table 4.
We have paused setting a budget for the Fee Anomalies Grant at this stage and will liaise with the sector about our future approach.

Main Teaching Grant

Main Teaching Grant (MTG) for AY 2024-25 has been set at £682.9m, a reduction of £16.6m (-2.4%). Indicative allocations for individual universities are shown in Table 2.
We have removed funded places from some institutions in response to under-delivery against allocated funded places. In doing so we have continued to protect opportunities for Scottish students – see section below on funded student places.

Teaching subject prices

As indicated above, teaching subject prices for AY 2024-25 are unchanged from AY 2023-24 as set out below.
Our gross subject prices for AY 2024-25 include the following assumed level of tuition fees for ‘home fee’ students:
Full-time First Degree: £1,820.
Other Undergraduate: £1,285.
Taught Postgraduate: £7,000 (see below).
In November 2022, Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) announced that the maximum tuition fee loan rate for postgraduate students would increase from £5,500 to £7,000 from AY 2023-24. This announcement was made after many universities had set tuition fee rates for AY 2023-24. Therefore, for AY 2023-24 teaching funding allocations, SFC made no change to its postgraduate tuition fee rate assumption and we indicated at the time that we would match the new SAAS fee loan rate in our tuition fee assumptions from AY 2024-25. In subject groups five and six, where our price is less than the taught postgraduate fee assumption, the assumed tuition fee will be the subject group price.

Compensation for Expensive Strategically Important Subjects

We have made changes to the compensation we provide to universities delivering expensive, strategically important non-controlled subjects involving students from the rest of the UK (rUK). Our current model assumes that Scottish universities need to be compensated because, to remain competitive, they will charge rUK students an annual fee of £9,250 for three years of a four-year degree. However, a recent review shows that some universities are now receiving four sets of fees. We have updated our modelling to reflect this and the most recent distribution of rUK students.
If fully implemented, the proposed changes would reduce this element of MTG by £8.2m. This would have a significant impact for some institutions. The available budget has allowed us to mitigate the impact to some extent by phasing in the change to this element, reducing it by £6.2m to 12.4m for AY 2024-25 .

Funded student places

As planned, we have removed the SQA places (1,289 FTEs) introduced in AY 2020-21 following the revised 2020 Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) qualification results. This has been done by removing funded places from institutions that have reported the highest levels of under-delivery in their AY 2023-24 Early Statistics return. Generally, for those institutions we have removed around a quarter of the unfilled places.
Any reductions made are in proportion to the distribution of funded places across subject price groups and are applied to undergraduate and postgraduate places, in line with the reported under-delivery in the AY 2023-24 Early Statistics.
We have not made any changes to consolidation numbers as a result of changes to funded places at this stage (Table 9). We plan to consider how these changes should impact on consolidation numbers with individual institutions.
Given that we are removing some funded places that have not been filled, and that European Union students are graduating from the system, this will not reduce places or opportunities for Scottish students. In addition, as we are not removing the full level of under-delivery, universities that have had funded places removed will need to increase intake for AY 2024-25 to fill their overall number of funded places.
Indicative funded student places are set out in Table 3, with further detail provided in Table 10.

Graduate Apprenticeships

We remain committed to supporting Graduate Apprenticeships (GAs) and the expectation is that the sector will deliver an intake of 1,378 GA places in AY 2024-25. As in AY 2023-24, we have not identified separate funded student places for GAs in AY 2024-25 and discussions are ongoing with GA providers on volumes and frameworks.

Additional funded places for Widening Access and Articulation

Streamlining the learner journey by encouraging articulation between colleges and universities remains a priority for SFC and the Scottish Government. SFC’s additional articulation places (‘associate student’) scheme continues to support this priority area, and there are no changes to the scheme for AY 2024-25.
Universities (and colleges) should continue with current arrangements to meet Ministerial priorities to expand articulation and ensure support continues for disadvantaged learners to progress to degree level study. SFC expects at least 75% of additional articulation/associate student funding for those years in which activity is delivered in colleges, to be transferred from universities to colleges.

Innovation Centre TPG places

SFC continues to provide additional funded student places (205 FTEs) for Masters-level courses to be delivered under the Innovation Centre (IC) programme. These places put particular emphasis on the development of provision to help address the skills needs of the IC’s relevant industry. This involves close industry engagement, often in the form of a student placement at an IC’s industrial partner. While there will be no change to the number of funded places, distribution between institutions may vary. This will be reflected in the final funding announcement.

Widening Access and Retention Fund

The Widening Access and Retention Fund (WARF) for AY 2024-25 is £15.6m, which is unchanged from AY 2023-24 . Indicative WARF allocations for individual universities are shown in Table 4.

Small Specialist Institutions

Including funding identified for world leading Small Specialist Institutions (SSIs), the SSI Grant for AY 2024-25 is £13.8m, an increase of £1.7m from AY 2023-24 . Additional funding for Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has been provided to mitigate changes to other elements of funding. Indicative SSI Grant allocations for individual universities are shown in Table 4.

Disabled Students Premium

The Disabled Students Premium (DSP) for AY 2024-25 is £2.9m, which is unchanged from AY 2023-24 . Indicative DSP allocations for individual universities are shown in Table 4.

Pensions contribution

This funding (£4.8m in AY 2023-24) has been removed for AY 2024-25 . This contribution was introduced in 2019 to recognise an increase in STSS pension contributions. It was initially time-limited up to March 2023, but we were able to maintain this funding for AY 2023-24. However, it is no longer affordable within this funding envelope.
This funding (£7.0m in AY 2023-24) has been removed for AY 2024-25 . Universities should continue to develop their curriculum to respond to employer needs and should consider how best to deliver course material developed for the Upskilling Fund.

Controlled subjects

Upon the receipt of guidance letters from the Scottish Government, SFC publishes intake targets for the controlled subjects of Dentistry, Medicine, Pre-registration Nursing & Midwifery Education, Paramedic Education, Prosthetics & Orthotics, Optometry and Initial Teacher Education.
Associated funded student places in AY 2024-25 for controlled subjects will be updated in the final funding announcement, including additional places funded by the Scottish Government. In the meantime, in line with the approach in previous years, for this indicative announcement we are using AY 2023-24 figures for SFC funded places (only) for controlled subjects.

Research and innovation funding

We have increased core R&I grants by £12.6m (4.2%) to £317.2m for AY 2024-25 . We have allocated the uplift as follows:
£9.5m to the Research Excellence Grant (REG) to support world-leading research, increasing the Grant to £256.3m for AY 2024-25 .
£1.0m for the Research Postgraduate Grant (RPG) for postgraduate research training and support, increasing the Grant to £37.9m for AY 2024-25 .
£2.2m increase to the new Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund (KEIF) to support university-business interactions (a total of £23.0m for AY 2024-25 ).
This approach will support Scotland’s competitive position on discovery research and economic strategy ambition on innovation. Indicative funding allocations are shown in Table 6.
The REG and RPG have been allocated on the same basis as this year. Universities are encouraged to use the additional funding allocated through these grants to support their research culture ambitions.
The University Innovation Fund (UIF) has been replaced by the Knowledge Exchange and Innovation Fund (KEIF). KEIF will use the latest Knowledge Exchange data and set a trajectory for delivery aligned to Scottish Government priorities around commercialisation and entrepreneurship. In deriving the KEIF allocations for AY 2024-25, we have put in place a mitigation which ensures that no institution has fallen below their AY 2022-23 UIF allocation given the one-off uplift in AY 2023-24. Further information on KEIF is available on our website.

Capital funding

SFC’s FY 2024-25 university capital budget (excluding R&I funding) is £28.4m; an increase of £2.6m (10.2%) from the FY 2023-24 budget of £25.8m. The breakdown of this budget is shown below:

Capital maintenance

The Capital Maintenance Grant for FY 2024-25 has increased by £1.2m from FY 2023-24 to £5.0m . Indicative funding allocations for individual universities are shown in Table 8.

Research capital

We are expecting to receive £18.8m of Higher Education Research Capital (HERC) grant funding from the UK Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) for FY 2024-25, which will be matched by SFC, providing a total of £37.6m . We will confirm individual university grant allocations in the final funding announcement in May.

Digital poverty

In FY 2023-24 universities received £1.6m of the £5.0m earmarked in the published college capital budget to support digital poverty (resulting in an overall capital budget for universities of £27.4m). The Scottish Government’s budget for FY 2024-25 does not include any specific capital funding to support digital poverty and accordingly there is no separate budget provision for digital poverty in our funding allocations for FY 2024-25 .

Funding transfer to SAAS

SFC anticipates a transfer of funding to SAAS totaling £22.8m, which is unchanged from 2023-24.
We have attached the following indicative tables for 2024-25:
Table 1 – Summary of announced funding
Table 2 – Main Teaching Grant
Table 3 – Funded student places
Table 4 – Teaching grants
Table 5 – Research Excellence Grant
Table 6 – Research and Innovation Grants
Table 7 – Teaching, Research and Innovation funding compared to AY 2023-24
Table 8 – Capital Maintenance funding
Table 9 – Consolidation numbers
Table 10 – Funded places to price groups

Fair Work First

The Scottish Government expects that all public bodies, and those in receipt of public funds, should be exemplars of Fair Work and that they should be able to demonstrate practices of Fair Work. As recipients of public funds, universities must be committed to Fair Work practices for staff (including any agency or sub-contractor workers) engaged in the delivery of activity associated with public funds.

Further information

If you require any additional information, please contact Richard Maconachie, Director of Finance, email: [email protected] or Gordon Craig, Deputy Director, Tertiary Education Funding, email: [email protected] , in the first instance.

Karen Watt Chief Executive

SFC Strategic Plan 2022-27

Building a connected, agile, sustainable tertiary education and research system for Scotland.

The University of Chicago The Law School

Geoffrey stone marks a half century of teaching.

When Geoffrey R. Stone, ’71, started his senior year at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967, he had no idea what he would do next. It was the height of the Vietnam War and like many of his male classmates, he thought about attending graduate school. But he was not sure what he wanted to study. Anthropology seemed to pull him, but he ultimately chose the law because he felt it could be used as a vehicle for social change.

Fast forward to today, and Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Professor of Law, is a preeminent authority on civil rights and constitutional law and one of the nation’s best-respected civil libertarians.

The impact he has had in the world of academia and beyond cannot be overstated. In just the past ten years, Stone was called on by President Obama to examine the country’s national security policy in the wake of the Edward Snowden leak, helped guide the White House in addressing sexual violence on college campuses, and coauthored an amicus brief in the historic Obergefell v. Hodges case.

His influence stretches far and wide, but throughout his career Stone has remained steadfastly committed to the Law School and the University that he has called home for the last fifty years. Over the decades, he has taught an estimated 8,000 students, served as Law School Dean, served as University Provost, and led many committees that have shaped key University policies and initiatives, including, most notably, the Chicago Principles. The American Constitution Society duly named him a “legal legend” in 2012, which he surely remains to this day.

Finding His Calling

A young man with long hair smiles at the camera.

Originally from the East Coast, Stone had never been to the Midwest before enrolling at the Law School. He had turned down acceptances to Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, starting himself down a path that back then he could have scarcely imagined. When he arrived at the Law School, his uncertainty about his vocation quickly disappeared. He thrived during his years as a student, serving as editor in chief of the Law Review before graduating cum laude.

Stone went on to clerk for US Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and Judge J. Skelly Wright on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Afterward, he found himself at another crossroads: continue working or teach. He was unsure about a career in academia, but one of his favorite professors, Owen Fiss, insisted that Stone interview for a faculty position at the Law School.

He finally relented, and to his surprise enjoyed the interview. (Wanting to challenge the faculty, in true Geof Stone fashion, he had given a presentation on how heroin addicts have a constitutional right to purchase and possess heroin.)

In 1973, Stone joined the faculty.

“It seems like only yesterday when I taught my first course, Civil Procedure, in the fall of 1973. I still vividly remember the students in that class and am still in touch with more than a few of them,” said Stone. “I still love teaching, interacting with students, and having them to my home for dinner (occasionally). Like my remarkable colleagues, our students are smart, curious, hard-working, and challenging. Teaching is a joy.”

In his early years of teaching, Stone describes himself as a hippie. He had long hair and a beard and was the only faculty member who didn’t wear a tie. He rose through the ranks and had several title changes, starting with “the Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law” in 1984. It seemed fitting, as Stone says many of his ideas at the time were inspired by Kalven, with whom he’d worked closely and looked up to when he first joined the faculty.

Black and white photograph of two men at an award ceremony. The man on the left is handing a framed award to the man on the right, who has a full beard and is dressed in a dark suit and tie. They are both smiling and looking at each other. The backdrop includes a sign with the text 'National Association for Public Interest Law' visible behind them.

Evolving as a teacher, Stone soon established himself as a great innovator in the classroom. One of his lasting legacies is his seminar on constitutional decision-making, which he designed to give students a deeper understanding of the judicial process. The seminar became hugely popular and eventually made its way to other schools, often carried over by former students who became law professors themselves. It continues to captivate new generations of students at the Law School.

“Professor Stone made incredibly complex, nuanced, and frustrating areas of law enjoyable learning experiences,” said Jimmie Zahn, ’17. “What made the greatest impression on me as his student, however, was not his intellectual horsepower and scholarship, but his patience and kindness. In an industry where ability is often correlated with arrogance, I have only grown more appreciative of the traits that Stone possesses.”

His passion for transformative instruction did not go unnoticed. In 2006, he received the University’s Provost Award for Outstanding Teaching. In 2021, he was recognized with the University’s Norman Maclean Award, which honors senior faculty for extraordinary contributions to teaching and to the student experience. Even while serving as dean of the Law School and provost for the University, Stone was in the classroom.

“Professor Stone clearly drew energy from his students. No one left his classes unchallenged,” said Bjarne P. Tellmann, ’95. “His class on the First Amendment profoundly impacted my thinking about free speech because he taught us to think deeply about the amendment’s limits along with our values and all the assumptions and prejudices that America continues to confront.”

A Visionary Dean and Devoted Mentor

Black and white photograph capturing two men at a social event, both holding champagne glasses.

Outside the classroom, Stone began to get more involved in administrative responsibilities at the Law School and the University. In the 1980s, he chaired nearly every major committee at the Law School, from the Faculty Appointments Committee to the Admissions Committee. He grew particularly invested in attracting the most dynamic and promising young scholars to the faculty—a pursuit he continued to champion when he became the Law School’s ninth dean from 1987 to 1993.

Stone oversaw the hiring of many prominent faculty during his time as dean. He brought on future President Barack Obama and future US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, as well as commercial law scholar Randal C. Picker and criminal and juvenile law expert Herschella Conyers, who this year celebrated a 30-year teaching milestone. But his efforts to recruit brilliant faculty didn’t end there; Stone was a devoted mentor. He took time to show young faculty the ropes.

“Geof has had a tremendous impact on my career. He convinced me to be a Bigelow Fellow,” Genevieve Lakier, Professor of Law and Herbert & Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar, said. “He mentored me, respectfully but effectively, during my first few years of teaching, urging me to not be afraid to add to the conversation. Face-to-face, he can be very tough. But he is also supportive. I am sure he brings this same amazing double-edged mentorship to students.”

As dean, Stone nurtured a supportive and collegial environment for both faculty and students. He enabled students to have direct input on faculty committees, implemented quarterly town halls, and ushered in new academic and social organizations, like the Law School’s Public Service Program and the Law and Government Program, the latter of which promoted joint faculty appointments with other schools across the University.

Deeply committed to academic enterprise and encouraging a spirit of collaboration, Stone established the Law School’s celebrated Work-in-Progress (WIP) workshop for faculty. Convening weekly, WIP provides a space for faculty to present their papers to their colleagues and engage in lively discussions. The tradition continues to be a vital part of the Law School’s culture to this day.

“Stone is a most worthy successor to many legendary figures from the Law School’s rich past,” said Douglas Baird, the Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law, who is also a former dean of the Law School. “He instilled the same passion for teaching in generations of his colleagues and his insights into constitutional law have reshaped the way we think about free speech. His commitment to robust, honest, and civilized discourse epitomizes what is special about the University of Chicago.”

A Strategic University Leader

During his seventh year as dean, Stone was tapped to serve as provost from 1994 to 2002, expanding his impact within the UChicago community even further.

Black and white photograph of an older woman and a younger man seated at a banquet table. The woman, on the left, is wearing large round glasses, a white blouse with black accents, and earrings. She is smiling warmly. The man, on the right, appears in mid-conversation, wearing a dark suit and a tie.

In what was perhaps one of his most important contributions, Stone chaired the University’s Committee on Freedom of Expression, which in 2014 issued the seminal statement on academic free expression and from which the Chicago Principles were born. Stone’s role in drafting the principles is a lasting part of his legacy and has made him an icon in the world of academic free expression.

Yet just as significantly, though not as widely known, Stone successfully navigated the University through two major events during his seven years as provost.

He guided the University through one of its most tumultuous budget challenges in the 1990s, when financial trends at the time had plunged UChicago into the red. Restructuring the budget process to strengthen the University’s financial position for the short term and long term was his focus during his first years as provost.

Beyond that, as chair of the University’s Planning and Budget Committee, Stone was diligent and strategic in his allocation of resources. He paid special attention to bolstering funds for faculty salaries and scholarship, increasing stipends for graduate assistants, and improving the overall quality of student life across all areas of the University.

Portrait of a middle-aged man sitting in a black leather office chair. He has a relaxed posture with a slight smile, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and striped purple tie.

The second major event he led the University through was its two-year Campus Master Planning Process in the late 1990s, which culminated in the creation and revitalization of several areas around campus, including the Max Palevsky Residential Commons, the Bartlett Dining Commons, the Ratner Athletics Center, the Interdivisional Research Building, and improvements on the Midway Plaisance. He was also instrumental in establishing the Biopsychological Sciences Building, which opened in 1998.

Strategic in his leadership, Stone as provost worked tirelessly to ensure the University was positioned for continued success for every member of its community. When he finally stepped down to return to teaching and research, he was, at that point, the longest-serving provost in the history of the University.

“Geof’s contributions to the Law School, the University, and the legal academy are towering,” said Dean Thomas J. Miles, the Clifton R. Musser Professor of Law and Economics. “He is a distinguished scholar who has expanded the understanding of the Constitution, especially the First Amendment. As dean, he built the eminence of the Law School and inspired an enduring commitment to teaching. As provost during a critical moment, he set the University on a trajectory of unprecedented success. He led a highly influential affirmation of the University’s commitment to free inquiry, and he is a fearless and irreplaceable advocate for the freedom to speak and discuss.”

A Scholarly Giant

Black and white photo of a smiling man with a beard and curly hair standing in front of a bookshelf filled with numerous white binders

Looking at the breadth of his career, Stone’s teaching and leadership are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to his accomplishments.

A prolific scholar, Stone has written more than 20 books, contributed chapters to 100 more, and served as the lead editor for 35. He has authored 117 law review articles and served as chief editor for ten editions of one of our nation’s leading constitutional law casebooks and seven editions of a leading casebook on the First Amendment. As if these were not enough, he has written almost 500 news articles and editorials.

During his time as provost, Stone coedited eight volumes of the Supreme Court Review , the leading journal of constitutional law read by academics, judges, and practitioners the world over since 1991. He continues to hold the coeditor role today. He has also edited a 25-volume series on constitutional law, known as Inalienable Rights , which includes books by such authors as Richard Posner, Laurence Tribe, Martha Minow, and Owen Fiss, to name just a few. And he has served on the editorial advisory board of Political Science Quarterly since 2005.

Stone’s publications have won many national awards, and over his lengthy career, he has weighed in on some of the highest-profile issues of our time at the highest levels of all three branches of government.

Lee C. Bollinger, president emeritus of Columbia University, who has written and edited six books with Stone, with another two in the works, noted that Stone has provided the historical and general context for why the First Amendment has been interpreted in the ways it has over the last half century: “His books, essays, and law review articles bring to life how the nation has at times gone astray and let the mind of censorship punish dissent and stunt public discussion.”

Men standing in front of chalkboard in deep conversation.

Both Bollinger and Lakier point out that Stone was the first to recognize the significance of the Burger Court’s discovery of a content neutrality principle in the First Amendment. He plumbed the principle’s complexities and depths, and his arguments continue to significantly shape the conversation.

These days, Stone is concerned about American democracy and politics, which is evident in his latest two books with Bollinger, one about the decisions in Roe and Dobbs published earlier this year and another about the constitutionality of affirmative action, published earlier last year.

But what is also evident is his unwavering determination to continue to ask questions, challenge ideas, and have the conversations necessary to analyze current issues and find ways to move forward. As a scholar, Stone has made a profound impact on the legal world. And as the world continues to evolve, so too do Geof Stone’s ideas which keep him very busy. He currently has two book projects in the works, one on the future of free speech and another on campaign finance and the First Amendment.

“It is quite astonishing to think that I have been on the faculty for more than half a century,” reflected Stone. “I have loved the University and the Law School throughout these years, most of all because of our distinctive commitment to free and open intellectual discourse and disagreement. No other law school or university is so deeply committed to these values. This is what makes us special, and what makes us truly the nation’s champion of academic freedom. This is what I most admire about this institution. We constantly and courageously question and challenge one another in a vigorous and never-ending quest to learn.”

Claire L. Parins is the Senior Director of Academic Publications at the Law School.

Nadia Alfadel Coloma is the Associate Director of Content at the Law School.

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Sample research budget template
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Budget Allocation: A Step-by-Step Guide
10+ Research Budget Templates
How To Prepare A Budget For A Research Proposal : INTRODUCTION

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The Yale Budget
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HOW REVENUE AND BUDGET ALLOCATION IS DONE #revenue #budget #indianeconomy #economy
Why China may need to do more to boost investor confidence

COMMENTS

PDF Writing a Proposal Budget
What is a Proposal Budget and why is it needed? Before we get started talking about all the pieces of a budget, let's make sure that we're on the same page about what a budget actually is. A budget is a financial proposal that reflects the work proposed. It outlines the expected project costs in detail, and should mirror the project description.
How to plan and write a budget for research grant proposal?
Budget plan is a key element of a grant application. It demonstrates the required cost for the proposed project. It is a prediction of expenses and serves a plan for funders on how the organization will operate the project, spend the money in a given set of period and where their money will go.
How to make a simple research budget
A good budget shows the assessors that you have thought about your research in detail and, if it is done well, it can serve as a great, convincing overview of the project. Here are five steps to create a simple budget for your research project. 1. List your activities. Make a list of everything that you plan to do in the project, and who is ...
PDF Preparing a Proposal Budget Toolkit
A budget is a financial proposal that reflects the work proposed. It outlines the expected project costs in detail and should mirror the project description. A budget is presented as a categorical list of anticipated project costs representing the researcher's best estimate of the funds needed to support the proposed work.
Top 7 Research Budget Templates with Samples and Examples
This presentation template is an easy-to-use tool for determining the budget required for psychology research. With this slide, you can allocate a budget for each area, including diagnostic assessment, training, technology and tools, supplies, travel, and workforce. It is a practical, hands-on template with information required to plan the ...
Develop a research budget
A research budget contains both direct costs and indirect costs (overhead), but the level of detail varies from sponsor to sponsor. ... allocation of compensated faculty and staff time to projects, or; the purchasing of equipment by the university or other eligible sponsor for the benefit of the project. In-kind contributions.
Budget Justification
A well-developed budget is accompanied by a budget explanation or narrative, also known as a budget justification. A complete and realistic budget justification demonstrates that your project is well conceived. It also tends to minimize the chances that sponsors will arbitrarily reduce or eliminate budget categories. Sponsors have a good idea of what a project should cost, and
Develop Your Budget
Develop Your Budget. As you begin to develop a budget for your research grant application and put all of the relevant costs down on paper, many questions may arise. Your best resources for answering these questions are the grants or sponsored programs office within your own institution, your departmental administrative officials, and your peers.
Budget
Cost Allocation. When costs will benefit more than one project, they need to be allocated in proportion to how they will benefit each award. ... APL Fixed Fee and budget justifications are included in your proposal budget. APL's sole purpose is research, and its operating expenses are an allowable direct cost (2 CFR Part §200.413) on ...
A Guide to Evidence-Based Budget Development
Governments can also compel agencies to give priority to evidence-based programs when implementing their budget allocations. ... have the training needed to make data-based decisions. 17 Such training may be particularly important for the budget, research, and audit staff who often are charged with supporting evidence-based budgeting efforts ...
Determinants and Consequences of Budget Reallocations
As discussed above, research has shown that the initial budget allocation is likely to be distorted, in the sense that stronger entities cross-subsidize weaker ones. In addition to managers' potential bias for equal allocation (Bardolet et al. 2011 ), we argue that misallocations due to cross-subsidization are also driven by rent-seeking by ...
Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and ...
The FY 2024 President's Budget request includes $20 billion in mandatory resources to support pandemic preparedness, including $2.69 billion allocated to NIH for research and development of vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics against high priority viral families, biosafety and biosecurity, and to expand laboratory capacity and clinical ...
Sample Budget Justifications
Sample Budget Justifications. Sponsor requirements differ, and sample budget justifications should be seen only as a starting point. Guidelines for sponsor requirements are in the annotated budget justifications. Read the solicitation and the sponsor's proposal preparation guidelines for each proposal's requirements.
Budgeting Research: Three Theoretical Perspectives and Criteria for
Abstract: Budgeting is one of the most extensively researched topics in management. accounting and has been studied from the theoretical perspectives of economics, psy-. chology, and sociology ...
Optimal budget allocation for university research and publication
the budget allocation for research centres as well as go vernment-funded universities [5-7]. To f ace these challenges, research institutions need to consciously manage their c ore processes, the ...
How and When to Allocate Your Budgets to Stay Agile
Budget allocation fuels overall efficiency, in that department leaders don't need to ask for approval to expense individual tools, assign projects to freelancers, or add seats for software. ... An example of budget allocation is a predetermined percentage of company funding that goes to research and development, or sales and marketing. This ...
Mastering Budget Allocation Management for Finance Teams
Effectively managing budget allocations is crucial for the financial health and sustainability of any organization. Finance teams play a pivotal role in overseeing budget allocation, ensuring that spending aligns with strategic objectives and financial plans.In this article, we explore best practices for finance teams in the realm of budget allocation management.
Budget Allocation: A Step-by-Step Guide
For example, if your total budget is $2,000,000, and your marketing budget is $450,000, then your calculation would be: $450,000 / $2,000,000 * 100 = 22.5%. Then, if you like, you can display your budget allocation visually, like this: ( This is Finmark by the way) 4. Design a System For Monitoring Spend.
Budgeting in Healthcare Systems and Organizations: A Systematic Review
Introduction. A budget is a key lever in organizational planning and management ().It can be defined as an estimate of revenues/expenditures over a given time ().Budgeting is the process of resource allocation to produce the best outputs according to the revenue levels involved ().If done properly, budgeting can help managers better manage and control the organization ().
How we allocate our research budget
In delivering this programme, Heads of theme work collaboratively in support of multidisciplinary research and training. Following the government funding allocation, EPSRC Council determines the budget allocation for each theme, considering input from the heads of theme and their strategic advisory teams (SATs) or equivalent body. Heads of ...
6 Steps to Allocate Your Market Research Budget Effectively
Estimating costs for your market research is a critical step in effective budget allocation. Begin by itemizing expenses, including participant incentives, data collection tools, software, and ...
Research Budget Template
Medical Research Budget Template. researchamerica.org. Download. A research proposal budget sample is in many ways similar to the research budget sample, only that at this stage, it is still a proposal. This sample is often written in a linear or tabular format and it details all the expenses that are associated with the proposal project.
Budget Allocation Approach
The new Budget Allocation model will help the University in long-term planning and prioritizing key priorities such as student success, research, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and more. In alignment with this goal, the Budget Working Group (BWG) has highlighted potential candidates for changes or updates in the budget model as ...
University Indicative Funding Allocations 2024-25
Scottish Budget 2024-25. The Scottish Government's 2024-25 Budget set a university resource (revenue) budget for Financial Year (FY) 2024-25 of £760.7 million (m). Excluding the £20m transitional funding, which was initially part of the FY 2023-24 budget, this represents a decrease of £28.5m (-3.6%) from FY 2023-24.
Geoffrey Stone Marks a Half Century of Teaching
The second major event he led the University through was its two-year Campus Master Planning Process in the late 1990s, which culminated in the creation and revitalization of several areas around campus, including the Max Palevsky Residential Commons, the Bartlett Dining Commons, the Ratner Athletics Center, the Interdivisional Research Building, and improvements on the Midway Plaisance.

The Research Whisperer

1. List your activities

2. Check the rules again

3. Cost each item

4. Put it in a spreadsheet

5. Justify it

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Top 7 Research Budget Templates with Samples and Examples

Tejas Prasanna

Best Templates for Planning Your Research Budget

Template 1 - Impact matrix evaluation research solution budget

Template 2 Half-yearly research and development departmental budget

Template 3 - Budget Estimate for Research and Development Project

Template 4 Clinical Trial Phases with Communication and Budget Research Design for Clinical Trials

Template 5 Market research strategy with budget and area

Template 6 - Determine Budget for Psychology Research Proposal One-Pager Sample Example Document

Template 7 - Budgeting for Product Launch Market Research

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Develop Your Budget

Modular Budgets

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Detailed Budget: Other Direct Costs (Section F)

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Cost Allocation

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Equipment Fabrication

Equipment Rental

Facilities and Administrative Costs (F&A)