Budget Justification
A budget justification (short paragraphs describing each line item) should normally be included on all proposals to clarify and justify the requests made in the budget. As a general rule, the more "unusual" the request, the more justification that should be provided. Justify only items that you are requesting from the sponsor (for example, if you are only requesting 50% support for a personnel line, you do not need to explain where the other 50% support will come from, if there is any other source of support). Items which always need special justification include equipment purchases (especially personal computers), foreign travel, and administrative costs.
If you want to write your own budget justification, here is a template (in NSF format, so some details may need to be changed for other proposal sponsors) that you may use. Otherwise, you can provide the necessary information to your responsible RDS and work with them on the justification. Some general principles to keep in mind when writing budget justifications, organized according to basic expense categories, are as follows:
- Personnel. It is not necessary to name graduate students, undergraduate students, or postdoctoral associates in your budget justification. However, if you do name these individuals, it demonstrates to reviewers and program staff that you have someone in mind for the position, and will therefore be able to put them to work on the project more quickly than would be the case if you had to identify a likely candidate first. Even if you name an individual in the budget justification, this does not represent a commitment on your part to hire that exact person, or a commitment from the sponsor to fund them.
- Equipment. Equipment costs must be fully justified. This almost always means submitting a firm quote from a vendor for the item(s) you are requesting. If you are going to have to build the equipment, then you should get vendor quotes for those parts where you can, and be prepared to justify the remaining costs by reference to standard equipment catalogs or some other means. Please also note that general-purpose equipment is not eligible as a direct cost on a grant budget unless it is primarily or exclusively used in the actual conduct of the research. This includes items such as desktop and laptop computers, word-processing software packages, and the like.
- Travel. You do not have to specify exactly which conference(s) you propose to attend, but you can name them if you have some in mind. It is always a good idea to include an indication of the number of conferences budgeted for in each year of the proposal and whether these are domestic or international. For field work and other research-related travel (collaborating with researchers at another institution, for example, or projects at a national laboratory or other external facility), you should provide information about the number of people making each trip, its duration, and other details such as whether you will be traveling by automobile or by plane, how you estimated the travel costs, etc. Federal regulations require that all air travel paid for from grant funds must be on a U.S.-flagged carrier if one is available, although this can be on a code-sharing basis (i.e., the flight is on an airline that is technically not a U.S.-flagged carrier, but the ticket was issued by a cooperating partner that is).
- Materials and supplies. To assist your responsible RDS in preparing the budget justification, please provide a list of the general types of expendable materials and supplies that will, in your estimation, be required to carry out the research you are proposing. Except in rare cases, you do not have to provide an exhaustive list or show catalog numbers or other documentation for the amounts; but you should provide sufficient detail to demonstrate to reviewers and program staff that (a) you have anticipated the materials needs for the research plan you are proposing, and (b) there is adequate justification for the amount requested for materials and supplies.
- Publication/Documentation/Dissemination costs. Specify the annual amount requested, and provide details on how you arrived at this number, particularly for documentation, storage, and preservation of samples, database cleanup, and other less-common costs that fall under this category.
- Consultants. Be sure that the daily rate is not in excess of the maximum allowed by the funding agency, and provide justification for the rate. If travel and subsistence costs are not factored into the daily rate, these should be justified separately.
- Computer costs. If you are budgeting costs for leasing of computers, or for computer time and other associated costs, you should provide a vendor quote or some other published source for the rate being charged to the grant. Also be prepared to justify why the computing needs could not be met using NIU institutional computing resources.
- Subcontracts/subawards. Most of the justification for a subcontract budget (where NIU is the lead institution) should come from the subaward partner(s). You may want to include one or two sentences describing why the work cannot be done at NIU and why you chose the partner(s) you did (for example, because of a pre-existing collaborative relationship, proximity to the NIU campus, availability of the necessary instrumentation and/or expertise, etc.).
- Other direct costs. Whenever possible, provide quotes, catalog prices, or other published information to justify proposed rates for other costs, particularly for contractual services. Consult your responsible RDS for information about tuition costs.
