Return of Recovered Facilities and Administrative Costs

Facilities & Administrative (F&A) Cost Rates are negotiated with the Department of Health and Human Services, RIT's cognizant agency. Rates specifically relate to RIT Central Administration Services and General Institutional costs such as heat, light, and power, etc. Various sources of revenue, whether from recovery of F&A Costs on sponsored projects, tuition, gifts from donors, as well as other sources, are essential to maintain the fiscal viability of the Institute.

For the period 07/01/2007 - 06/30/2009 RIT's Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Cost Rates are as follows:

Service	Percent of cost
Organized Research (on-campus rate)	40.5%
Organized Research (off-campus rate)	26.0%
Organized Instruction (on-campus rate)	45.2%
Organized Instruction (off-campus rate)	26.0%
Other Sponsored Activity* (on-campus rate)	32.7%
Other Sponsored Activity* (off-campus rate)	26.0%

*Other Sponsored Activity is activity not related to credit-bearing courses but does not involve research. Ergonomics is an example of Other Sponsored Activity.

To incent and reward faculty and others who engage in sponsored activities, the Institute has adopted a policy of returning a percentage of F&A costs recovered on sponsored projects to departments and others directly involved in the administration of these projects.

Distribution Procedure

Effective July 1, 2006, the Institute's procedure for distribution of recovered F&A costs is as follows:

General Institute - 55% of recovered F&A costs will remain with the General Institute to support the operating budget. This amount is intended to cover a portion of the costs associated with several offices directly involved in the pre and post award administration of sponsored projects including the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), Sponsored Research Services, Sponsored Programs Accounting and the Technology Licensing Office, as well as other costs associated with human resource administration, accounting, payroll processing, compliance, database administration, etc. Annually, during the budget process, the Finance & Administration Division will establish a budget for recovery of F&A costs. While recovered F&A will be distributed to the Deans and PIs per the information in items # 3 and # 4 below, as well as the timeline indicated section C, funds will not be returned to the OVPR until the annual budgeted F&A recovery amount has been met. 100% of the amount over and above the budgeted recovery amount will be returned to the OVPR.
Office of VP of Research (OVPR) - 25% of F&A costs recovered will be returned to the OVPR who will use the funds to make awards to programs with external grants that include F&A recovery. The awards will be made to support ongoing proposal writing, soft money gaps, lab support, lab equipment, and other research support activities. Programs and PIs may request funds from this pool annually. Funds will be allocated by OVPR based upon established need, priority of the request, and availability of funds (see Section D - Process to Request Funds below).
Deans / Department Heads / Center Directors - 10 % of F&A costs recovered on a faculty or staff members' (e.g., the PI) sponsored projects will be returned to the appropriate Dean, Department Head, or Center Director. These discretionary funds may be used in support of scholarship related activity (i.e., support seed grants for new faculty or new scholarship agendas for existing faculty).
Principal Investigators (PIs) - 10% of the F&A costs recovered on the PIs' sponsored projects will be returned to PI to be used in support of on-going scholarship/research initiatives.

Exceptions to the above Procedure

CIMS & NTID - The return of F&A for sponsored projects conducted in the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf will remain at the previously agreed upon amounts. 50% of the remaining balance will remain with the General Institute; the balance will be returned to the OVPR. (F&A earned on sponsored projects funded by the Nippon Foundation is distributed in full to NTID for use in its operations.)

Enterprise Centers - In addition to the delivery of educational services, a primary function of an enterprise center is to provide product testing, training, and/or short term problem solving for outside entities on a fee for service basis. Typically, there is no intellectual property associated with these activities.

Current Enterprise Centers include:

College	Enterprise Center
College of Applied Science & Technology	CEMA
College of Engineering	CQAS
College of Imaging Arts & Sciences	PAL
College of Imaging Arts & Sciences	* IPI
College of Science	CBET

Recovered F&A costs will be distributed as follows: 1) 55% to General Institute; and, 2) 45% to the enterprise center, upon approval of the applicable Dean. When an enterprise center engages in a sponsored research project, the F&A distribution associated with that project will follow the RIT distribution procedure outlined in the Section A above. (Note: the return of F&A for sponsored projects conducted in IPI will remain at the previously agreed upon amounts; 50% is returned to IPI and the balance of 50% remains with the General Institute)

Research Centers - Research Centers involve multiple PIs and support staff, some of whom are entirely supported by soft money funding (i.e., salaries paid from externally funded grants & contracts). The minimum annual revenue generated by a research center is $.5M per year for a period of at least two consecutive years. In addition, the following criteria must be met:

There are multiple sponsored projects in the center, managed over a sustained period of time.
There is a research team headed by a faculty member with two or more additional staff funded by soft money (e.g., research faculty, post docs, technicians, students, admin support).
The Center has a laboratory with equipment that must be maintained or upgraded on a regular basis.

The distribution procedure for a qualified Research Centers is: 1) 55% - General Institute; 2) 20% - Research Center; 3) 5% - OVPR; 3) 10% - Dean or Department Head; and, 4) 10% - PI.

Current Research Centers include:

College/Center	Research Center	Principal Investigators (Director*)
FIC	NPRL	Ryne Raffaelle* David Forbes, Brian Landi, Seth Hubbard
GCCIS	CASCI	Pengchen Shi* Gregor von Lazewski, Anne Haake, Edith Hemaspaandra, Nirmala Shenoy
KGCOE	Fuel Cell / Micro Channel Research	Satish Kandlikar*
CIS	DIRS	John Schott* Scott Brown, Emmet Ientilucci, John Kerekes, Dave Messinger, Mike Richardson, Carl Salvaggio, Anthony Vodacek
CIS	LIAS	Harvey Rhody* Robert Kremens, Don McKeown
CIS	MCSL	Mark Fairchild* Roy Burns, Jim Ferwerda, Mitch Rosen, Lawrence Taplin, Dave Wyble
CIS	RIDL	Don Figer* Ben Davies, Zoran Ninkov
COS	CCRG	Manuela Campanelli* David Merritt, Carlos Lousto, Yosef Zlochower

Note: the "research center" designation must be approved in advance by the OVPR.

Other - Unless explicitly stated in items 1 - 3 above, all other exceptions (i.e., amounts that differ from the percentages stated in the distribution procedure above), will be approved by the OVPR and be made out of F&A recovery funds that have previously returned to OVPR.

Process for Distributing F&A Recovery

On an annual basis, Sponsored Programs Accounting (SPA) will return recovered F&A costs on multi-year awards per the distribution policy above. The annual distribution is based upon F&A recovered as of the end of the Institute's fiscal year and will occur prior to the August accounting close process. Deans, department heads, PIs and others will be notified of the amount of their F&A return.

Throughout the fiscal year, SPA will process a final F&A distribution within 90 to 120 days following the end date of the specific sponsored project for all remaining F&A costs recovered.

Process to Request Funds from OVPR

Requests for funds to support ongoing research initiatives (refer to item A.2. above) will be reviewed by the OVPR in September. Priority consideration will be given to those who originally generated the F&A.

To request funds, follow the steps outlined below:

Requests must be made in writing through the submission of a "Request for Use of F&A Recovery Funds" form located on the Controller's Office web page at: http://finweb.rit.edu/controller/forms.html.
Prior to submission, the Requestor is expected to obtain the approval of the appropriate Dean or other designated representative (e.g., Center Director, Department Head, Lab Head, etc.).

If you have questions regarding the distribution of F&A Costs, please contact SPA at 475-5428.

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