UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN MEDICAL SCHOOL

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Office of Research
University of Michigan
Medical School
4107 Medical Science Building I
1301 Catherine Street  SPC 5624
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-5624
734 615 1332
fax 734 763 4936

Regulatory Affairs

Institutional Cost Sharing

Revised Policy Effective March 1, 2002

This policy describes the strategy for cost sharing commitments between the Medical School Office of Research and the Departments/Units and replaces the previous policy dated June 1990.

The principle purpose of institutional cost sharing is to enable Medical School instructional and research faculty to enhance applications to external sponsors. This policy recognizes that departments and units now share in the recovery of Facility & Administrative (F&A) costs. The current practice in the Dean's Office is to allocate a portion of F&A recoveries to the Office of Research to support cost sharing requests. The guidelines below have been modeled on the F&A distribution ratio and increase the funds available to investigators through the participation of units in cost-sharing commitments.

Sources of Funding

F&A recoveries are shared with Medical School units, and each year a portion of the recoveries is set aside for the Office of Research to fund cost sharing in cooperation with units. Consistent with how incremental F&A recoveries are shared, for every two dollars in cost sharing committed by the Office of Research, the participating units will commit three dollars.

The amount available for cost sharing is contingent upon the allocation to the Office of Research and may vary on a year-by-year basis depending upon total F&A recoveries and the effective ratio established in conjunction with the general funds model.

The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) may also contribute to cost sharing commitments in some circumstances.

General Guidelines
1. Preliminary requests for cost sharing must be submitted in writing to the Office for Research and Graduate Studies for consideration at least two months prior to submission to sponsor. This is particularly important for inter-departmental and inter-school proposals. Requests submitted after this deadline receive lower priority. Preliminary requests must list the expected cost sharing participants and give an estimate of the cost sharing from each participant.
2. Final cost-sharing plan must be in place no later than two weeks prior to submission to sponsor.
3. All requests are reviewed on a competitive basis.
4. Reductions in actual awards may correspondingly decrease the level of any commitment made by the School.
5. Any commitments made by the School refer only to a single iteration of the application. If the application is not approved for funding by the granting agency, the School's commitment no longer applies and the investigators must reapply for funding on any future (or variation of) submission, as appropriate

Highest Priority is given to the following activities:
1. Applications to funding agencies requiring institutional cost sharing.
2. Non-recurring requests for necessary research equipment or facilities renovations.
3. Construction grants requiring institutional cost sharing.
4. Applications for core support functions, equipment, administration or training
activities. In general, a proposal for major equipment cost sharing is more favorably considered when the request does not exceed 20% of the actual equipment cost.

Limitations:
1. Requests for small amounts more appropriately covered at the unit level
(e.g., site visit expenses) receive low priority.
2. Requests for recurring expenses, such as salary, are not considered.
3. Requests for competing or non-competing renewals receive considerably lower priority.