The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation (“OVCRI”) sometimes provides partial Cost Sharing under a limited set of circumstances and only when requested by deans or institute directors. See the OVCRI Cost Sharing Guidelines at http://research.illinois.edu/business-policies-guidelines/cost-sharing.

Sometimes, under special circumstances, depending on whether the sponsor requires a reduced F&A rate and whether the sponsor indicates that unrecovered F&A is allowable as cost share.

No, unless you have received prior approval from the Unit Executive Officer. Specific approval beyond the Principal Investigator’s acknowledgement is required for a faculty member or other university employee to voluntarily commit effort as Cost Sharing (university support) for the benefit of an outside entity where there is no funding issued to the university.

Yes, if you have a paid university appointment, have eligible time available to devote to the project, have obtained the required approvals, and if the sponsor permits. You must include all contributed effort – person months and the financial commitment—on the internal Proposal Transmittal and approved by the appropriate Unit Executive Officer or delegate. However, to the extent possible, you should include effort to be expended in performance of the project as a direct salary cost in the proposal budget.

Yes, costs used to satisfy Cost Sharing commitments are subject to the same policies as the costs directly reimbursed by the sponsor unless the sponsor specifically permits an exception. To be claimed as Cost Sharing, the costs must be allowable under university and sponsor policies, must be allocable to the project, and should be reasonable and necessary for the performance of the project.

While the terms Cost Sharing and Matching are often used interchangeably, Matching has a specific meaning related to the ratio of Cost Sharing. Matching refers to a situation in which the sponsor requires the university to match the level of grant funding in some proportion with funds received from another party (such as a 50% match or a “1 to 1” match). This type of Cost Sharing is usually stated in the program announcement or Request for Proposals (RFP) as an eligibility requirement (mandatory) and is often provided from institutional resources.

The use of the Campus Computing Cluster or the use of contracted cloud services is not subject to facilities and administrative costs. The decision to not charge F&A on these services provides flexibility for our investigators to choose the best technical solution to support their research compute and storage needs. For the campus, the decision promotes cost efficiencies through a reduction in the use of space and consumption of utilities when an investigator elects to use an externally contracted cloud provider.

We do not have a separately negotiated rate agreement for industry-sponsored clinical trials, but it is national practice to charge 26% Total Direct Costs (TDC) for industry-sponsored clinical trials. All other clinical trials would use the institutional negotiated rate as a Research project.

It depends on the source of the funding, the scope or work, or assignment of the visiting scholar or student. If the source of the funding is a commercial entity, then the negotiated rate should be charged. If the source of funding is a non-profit, foundation, or governmental entity, then the first $10,000 of support is exempted from F&A with any amount in excess of $10,000 being subject to a minimum of 10% or the rate specified by the sponsor.

Uniform Guidance requires recipients to have a federally negotiated indirect cost rate. If the subrecipient does not have and has never had a federally negotiated indirect cost rate, then the university will allow the subrecipient to proposed budget with the de minimus rate of 10% MTDC. The university will not negotiate an F&A rate with subrecipients; however, it will allow a subrecipient an opportunity to secure a federally negotiated indirect cost rate before a subagreement is issued. Please note that some federal agencies may further limit the rate for certain subawardees.