Proposal Budgets

Draft your budget alongside your project narrative, not after it — a budget built in isolation from the proposed work is one of the most common reasons a proposal comes back for revision. Read the sponsor's own budgeting guidance closely before you start, since caps, restricted categories, and formatting requirements vary widely between funders.

After you send your Intent Coupon, ORSPA meets with you to plan the budget and budget justification so that both comply with the funding agency's guidelines and IVAN Research Institute policies. Your ORSPA Pre-Award team can supply current salary, fringe, and indirect cost figures, and will check your draft budget against what the proposed work actually requires. The budget is part of the complete proposal documents the Pre-Award office needs three (3) weeks before the submission due date.

Only commit cost sharing or matching funds when a sponsor's guidelines explicitly require it — cost-shared funds are real institutional costs, are subject to audit, and become a binding commitment once the proposal is submitted. Where cost sharing is required, ORSPA prepares it as a separate budget with its own approvals, not folded into the main request.

A budget justification earns its place in the proposal by explaining why each line item is necessary, not by restating the budget in prose. Keep it organized in the same order as the budget itself, cover only items that are actually budgeted, and check the sponsor's page limits and formatting rules before you consider it final.

Every cost should read as reasonable, allowable, and necessary to carry out the proposed work — if a reviewer would have to guess why a cost is there, the justification needs more detail, not less.

Unless a sponsor has published a policy capping or waiving indirect costs, IVAN Research Institute's standard indirect cost rate applies to your budget. Where a sponsor does publish a limit, that limit governs — keep a copy of the published policy with your proposal file, since ORSPA will need it to explain the reduced rate during review.

Ask the Pre-Award team for the current indirect cost rate and, where relevant, the correct treatment for subaward costs, since only the first tranche of most subawards is subject to indirect costs.