Facilities and Administrative (F&A) Costs

The university incurs Facilities and Administrative (F&A) costs through common activities that cannot be attributed easily to an individual project or program. General categories include operations and maintenance (e.g., utilities, janitorial services, building maintenance and repairs); use of buildings and equipment; sponsored project administration and accounting; library expenses and collection acquisition; institution-wide administrative expenses; and general office supplies.

Each sponsored project is expected to pay its share of these research infrastructure costs. The F&A cost rate is negotiated between Georgia Southern and the US Department of Health and Human Services and applied to all projects, regardless of sponsor. 

Some sponsoring agencies do not reimburse F&A costs at the full rate. The university will honor these exceptions when the organization has written guidelines or agency policy on payment of F&A costs.  These exceptions to F&A rates must be documented, with the written sponsor policy indicating the required F&A rate uploaded with the Proposal Development file.  This form of exception to F&A does NOT require an Institutional Commitment Form. 

Non-sponsor mandated exceptions to this policy (i.e. voluntary reductions, off-campus rate) may be considered on a case-by-case basis if such a deviation from the federally negotiated rate is specifically permitted by the sponsor in established, written policy for any and all potential applicants. All deviations are subject to approval by the Vice Provost for Research prior to submission of the grant or execution of the contract.  See the Institutional Commitment Form.  Note: this type of approval would be very rare and would require a compelling justification from the PI for the institutional commitment.

Additional details on F&A rates and policies are available here.

Last updated: 4/27/2021