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What a $500k grant proposal looks like

austinhenley.com

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Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#31

Post by zzz95 »

danielmorozoff wrote: post #24

Having written NSF grants and other grants - DARPA etc. I have won some and lost many. I compiled a few non obvious takeaways: - Story telling is everything. It seems this is a huge lesson never taught in grad school. - Technical details sometimes work against you. The author is absolutely right that getting the general thought process across is crucial. - Who you get on your review committee tends to significantly s…

The takeaways are very true. I would go further to say that not only is the story telling and the scientific vision a very important part of the sell, the language and terminology needs to be in sync with the reviewers. Often times researchers write very technical details in the proposal that is hard to parse and backfires.

In non-blind proposals, pre-communication is the key.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#33

Post by Anechoic »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #14
countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

Compared to industry? That's very low! Universities are cheap. 53% overhead works out to be 34% of the total money. I've written grants with many industrial partners (companies you would recognize). All have had much higher overhead rates. Normally these rates are kept secret, but here's a fun memo from the Federal Transit Administration talking about 127% overhead rates! https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/procureme…

The DoD gives as an example a rate of 125%!

For DOT engineering design firms and environmental firms, a typical overhead rate is 165%-ish, I've seen ranges from 125% to 250%. Over 180% is considered "high".

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#34

Post by ta988 »

lazyjeff wrote: post #10
glofish wrote: post #5

also noteworthy elements: university overhead 53%, so that leaves $250K. Over five years that works out to basically $50K/year That needs to cover 1 month summer salary plus the salary and the tuition for a single student, and the travel to conferences, and the experiment ... and that is a "prestigious" CAREER award only few people get ... no wonder the author jumped ship

Actually the math doesn't work quite like that, but it's a common misconception. 53% indirect costs (overhead) is multiplied on the direct costs rather than the total amount, so it is actually 500K-500K/(1+0.53) = 173K taken by the university assuming the full amount can be charged indirect. In practice, some charges like tuition and equipment do not have indirects, so the actual amount taken by the university would…

And most of the time (if not always with NIH) when researchers say they got a $x grant, x is the direct cost so what they get directly. then you can often negotiate things back from your university such as time on shared equipments, students...

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#35

Post by yazaddaruvala »

ordersofmag wrote: post #12
monkeybutton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how the university gets to the 53% overhead figure. Do they have a fully costed internal accounting of things like "rent" for lab space and share of administrators' time/salary?

Yes. Cost of space, cost of power, cost of business office staff to process the paychecks, cost of a bunch of CPA and auditors to make sure you're following all the federal regulations about how the money can be spend, cost of IT to provide WiFi and network jacks and bandwidth, cost of water in the water fountain, etc, etc.... At institutions where a large fraction of the work going on is grant funded if you didn't d…

> Cost of space, cost of power, cost of IT to provide WiFi and network jacks and bandwidth, cost of water in the water fountain

Time to move to a WeWork? WeWork All Access - $3600/year. Or at home for "free" if no real lab is needed.

> cost of business office staff to process the paychecks

Time to move to Direct Deposit? For a grand total of $0!

> cost of a bunch of CPA and auditors to make sure you're following all the federal regulations about how the money can be spend

Let them spend it however for free? or hire a CPA for a couple days. No need for $173k worth of CPA time per grant.

> At institutions where a large fraction of the work going on is grant funded if you didn't do it this way you can't really make your institutional budget balance.

Based on the math, they either need to invest into automation or it seems like a dying industry.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#36

Post by ta988 »

countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

And if you look at the budget of most R1 state universities, you'll see that tuition is really far from covering the cost of education.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#37

Post by gumby »

glofish wrote: post #5

also noteworthy elements: university overhead 53%, so that leaves $250K. Over five years that works out to basically $50K/year That needs to cover 1 month summer salary plus the salary and the tuition for a single student, and the travel to conferences, and the experiment ... and that is a "prestigious" CAREER award only few people get ... no wonder the author jumped ship

53% is pretty good! I believe Stanford and MIT have O/H over 100%

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#39

Post by deater »

as someone who couldn't manage getting hired by an R1 university, and also had three NSF CAREER proposals rejected, it's a bit sobering to see someone get it all so easily and then walk away from it.

Not that I necessarily blame him, fairly burnt out on academia myself currently.

Not getting a CAREER award can really set one back, both in time wasted applying but then having to compete with those who have them. I often felt like the NSF asks for so much these days, including excessive (and possibly unrealistic amounts of) K-12 outreach. I am always curious if you go back after 5 years, how many of the winners actually did everything they promised in the proposal.

Re: What a $500k grant proposal looks like

#40

Post by michaelrpeskin »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #18
countvonbalzac wrote: post #7

I am not in academia but the 53% overhead to an outsider is absurd! Probably the same reason tuition has gotten so high, someone has to pay for all those deans, vice deans and vice vice deans!

That overhead honestly doesn't seem that high to me. If I think about private companies with low need for physical equipment (e.g. software companies) I suspect the overhead would be comparable if not greater. Usually I hear ~100% as an average figure (keeping in mind that overhead is defined as a percentage of non-overhead costs so 100% means half of your money spent is on overhead). But I'm not that confident. Woul…

I’m at a small software company that does lots of smallish (500k-1.5M) contracts like this. The government does audits to determine our overhead rate. Our is 2.8. That is my billing rate to the government is 2.8 times my hourly rate as determined by my salary. That pays for rent, benefits, and for things like the employees who aren’t on direct labor (e.g. accounting, HR, etc)
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