Develop Your Budget

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 Usage of Person Months FAQs.
• Salary Caps: NIH will not pay requested salary above the annual salary cap, which can be found at Salary Cap Summary. 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. 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.
• Graduate Students: Graduate students can be listed in either section A or B, but if listed in section B, include the individuals' names and level of effort in the budget justification section. Tuition remission is included in section F.8 (not section A), but is included in the graduate student compensation limits. Read more about the graduate student compensation limit. For current NRSA stipend levels, check the NIH Fiscal Policies.
• 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)

• Equipment: Equipment is defined as an item of property that has an acquisition cost of $5,000 or more (unless the organization has established lower levels) and an expected service life of more than one year. Tips:
  • Generally, equipment is excluded from the F&A base. 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.
• Travel: In the budget justification, include the destination, number of people traveling and dates or duration of your stay for all anticipated travel. As with the equipment justification, it is important that you clearly state how the travel is directly related to your proposed research (e.g. you can go to a conference to present your research, but not just for the purpose of "staying current in your field"). You should refer to your institution's travel policy for guidance on how you should arrange the travel, but if your institution lacks a policy, it is expected that you will follow the U.S. federal travel regulation.
• 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.
   
• Alterations and Renovations (A&R): A&R does not include general maintenance projects (normally handled under F&A) or projects exceeding $500,000 (considered "construction" projects). A&R can be used for projects such as altering a room to make space for a new grant-related piece of equipment. If applicable:
  • 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.
• Research Patient Care Costs: Few budgets contain patient care expenses, however if inpatient and/or outpatient costs are requested, the following information should be provided:
  • 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. 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.

Consortiums/Subawards

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

• Direct costs:
  • 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.
• F&A:
  • 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%.
  • If the consortium is with a for-profit entity, such as a small business, the organization must have a negotiated F&A rate before they can charge F&A costs. The default small business rate of 40% is only applicable to SBIR (R43 &R44) and STTR (R41 & R42) applications. See the Division of Financial and Accounting Services (DFAS) at NIH to set up a rate.
• Justification:
  • 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.

Understanding the Out Years

• 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 Salary Cap Summary and NIH Fiscal Policy FAQs.
• 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.