Administrative Support Costs in Existing Awards

The following guidelines are applicable in connection with administrative or clerical personnel currently being charged as direct costs in federally sponsored grants and contracts.

If an administrative or clerical position was included in a project budget, as submitted to and approved by the sponsoring agency, such direct charges can continue to be made (at the appointment levels indicated in the approved budget) for the duration of the budget period.

In the case of budgets for non-competing renewals (type 5) submitted to the National Institutes of Health, the expectation is that universities will determine for each project the appropriateness of direct cost expenses. NIH will not routinely delete these cost items from the non-competing awards. However, such direct costs may still be subject to audit review and disallowance if deemed inappropriate.

Operating support costs, such as telephone line charges and office supplies, if explicitly identified in the budget as submitted to and approved by the sponsoring agency, can continue to be made for the duration of the approved budget period. The charges should be clearly linked to the budget line items (for example, a line item for "communications" may not be sufficient to justify telephone line charges).

Caution should be exercised in continuing to include clerical and administrative salaries and administrative operating costs in budget submissions for on-going projects subject to periodic renewal. A more appropriate strategy may be to rebudget the authorized level of funding to exclude such administrative/clerical salary categories.

Major projects (including multi-investigator and "center" projects) may justify the assignment of clerical and administrative personnel as direct costs. Such salary charges should be explicitly documented in the budget explanation as to why they are essential to the project. [See In situations where administrative and clerical personnel may be called upon to support several projects or tasks within a larger research program, the appointments should be handled through the University's timekeeping system as a 090000 account, and the salaries and benefits should be budgeted accordingly. (Check with the DRDA Project Representative for appropriate procedures for the use of the 090000 accounts).