RIT
Controller

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 University.

Provisional Facilities and Administrative Cost Rates FY10

The following provisional facilities and administrative cost rates are in effect as of 7/1/2009 (FY 10). The provisional rates will remain in effect until the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), RIT's cognizant federal agency, has reviewed and approved RIT's proposed on-campus facilities and administrative cost rates for FY 10 - FY 12.

Description Rate
Organized Research
(on-campus rate)		 40.5%
Instruction
(off-campus rate)		 45.2%
Other Sponsored Activities
(on-campus rate)		 32.7%

Proposed Facilities and Administrative Cost Rates FY10 - FY12

The following on-campus facilities and administrative cost rates have been submitted to DHHS for approval. The proposed rates, which are subject to negotiation with DHHS, will be in effect when approved.

Description Rate
Organized Research
(on-campus rate)		 46.1%
Instruction
(off-campus rate)		 50.0%
Other Sponsored Activities
(on-campus rate)		 41.5%

*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 University returns 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:

  1. 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, according to the timeline described in the section "Process for Distributing F&A Recovery" below, 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.
  2. 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 -"Process to Request Funds from OVPR" below).
  3. 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).
  4. Principal Investigators (PIs)- 10% of the F&A costs recovered on the PIs' sponsored projects will be returned to the PI to be used in support of on-going scholarship/research initiatives.

Exceptions to the above Procedure

  1. CIMS
    • Federal and State Awards - CIMS receives 67.5% of federal and state awards when the F&A rate assessed on the award is the maximum allowed by the sponsor (typically, the rate negotiated by RIT with DHHS). When CIMS' negotiates a lower rate (than the approved rate) with the sponsor, the return is reduced to 50%.
    • Private Awards - CIMS receives 100% of F&A assessed on private awards.
    • SPA staff are not required to process journal entries annually for CIMS' returns (or at the conclusion of the award). Entries are processed monthly via an automatic allocation and then reconciled by Controller's Office staff. This exception to the standard procedure ensures that CIMS has sufficient resources available to fund their annual operating expenses.
  2. NTID - The return of F&A for sponsored projects conducted in 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.)
  3. Enterprise Centers **- In addition to the delivery of non-credit bearing 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. Enterprise Centers are primarily self-supported and receive minimal (e.g. salary funding for the Director but no other operating budget support) to no budget allocation from the University for their operations. They are financially structured to operate based on yearly pre-determined revenue and expense targets set by the respective College Dean.

    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

    In recognition of the self-supporting financial structure for Enterprise Centers, 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 "Distribution Procedure" 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.)

  4. 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 amount of annual expenditures recorded on externally-funded projects housed within the research center, including capital, must exceed $.5M per year for a period of at least two consecutive years. In addition, the following criteria must be met:
    • There are multiple (more than one) sponsored projects in the center, active at all times over a two year period.
    • There are ongoing costs associated with the operation of the Research Center including:
      1. two or more additional staff funded by soft money (e.g. research faculty, post docs, technicians, and admin support
      2. laboratory equipment that must be maintained or upgraded on a regular basis
      3. large volume of consumables necessary for continued operation of Center activity.

    In recognition of the financial investment required to operate a Research Center, recovered F&A costs will be distributed as follows: 1) 55% - General Institute; 2) 20% - Research Center; 3) 5% - OVPR; 4) 10% - Dean or Department Head; and, 5) 10% - Dean or Department Head; and, 6) 10% - PI.

    Current Research Centers include:

    College/Center Research Center Principal Investigators (Director*)
    FIC NPRL Ryne Raffaelle*
    David Forbes, Seth Hubbard
    KGCOE Fuel Cell / Micro Channel Research Satish Kandlikar*
    CIS DIRS Dave Messinger*
    Scott Brown, Mike Gartley, Emmet Ientilucci, John Kerekes, Mike Richardson, Carl Salvaggio, John Schott, Anthony Vodacek
    CIS LIAS Jan Van Aardt*
    Robert Krzaczek, Robert Kremens, Don McKeown, Harvey Rhody
    CIS RIDL Don Figer*
    Zoran Ninkov
    COS CCRG Manuela Campanelli*
    Hans-Peter Bischof, Joshua Faber, Carlos Lousto, David Merritt, John Whelan, Yosef Zlochower

    Note: the "Research Center" designation must be approved in advance by the OVPR.

  5. Other - Unless explicitly stated in items 1 - 4 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.

    6. ** Enterprise and Research Centers are evaluated by the Office of the Vice President for Research at the conclusion of each fiscal year to ensure they meet the criteria described above. In the event an organization that previously qualified as a Center does not meet the criteria for a specific fiscal year; recovered F&A costs for the following fiscal year will be distributed according to the standard "Distribution Procedure" outlined above.

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 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:

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