FAQs

As with costs directly charged to the sponsor, allowable cost sharing must be necessary and reasonable for the performance of the project objectives. As with direct charged expenses, cost shared expenses must be reasonable, allocable (i.e., directly benefit the specific project), and consistent with the terms of the award. Allowable cost sharing expenses must be expended (i.e., incurred) during the effective date of the award project. For details on eligibility criteria, see What Is Allowable/Eligible Cost Sharing.

It is important to understand the distinction between subrecipients and vendors.

Vendors:

• Provide goods and services as part of their normal business operations
• Do not participate in the intellectual direction of the project and, therefore, would not be included as authors on publications.
• Provide similar goods and services to many different purchasers
• Operates in a competitive environment
• Are not subject to compliance requirements

When the sponsor does not have an approved rate for non-research activities, the DLCI should contact the Provost Office to discuss whether the F&A objective should be equivalent to the current fund account overhead and fund transaction fee or to some other rate.

In cases where there is no pre-defined proposal format, the Office of Strategic Alliances & Tech Transfer (OSATT) recommends you use the Common Components of a Proposal for guidance.  However, there are additional elements that should be included in an industrial proposal that will assist OSATT in putting together a contract.  The proposal should spell out:

• What is the research you will be conducting?
• What is the research the company will be conducting, if applicable?
• Will you or anyone in your lab be conducting any of the research at the company?
• Will the company be sending any personnel to MIT to participate in the research?
• Will you be receiving any materials or data/databases from the company to conduct this research?
• Will you be sending any materials or data/databases to the company as a part of the research effort (as opposed to sharing the research results in a summary report)?
• Will you be using any material or data/databases from a third party in this collaboration (i.e. will you need to use material/data/databases you received from another university, company or other institution)? 
• Will you be collaborating with any third parties (i.e. Broad, a local hospital, another university)
• Do you have any Background IP that you will be bringing to this research effort?  If yes, can you identify that BIP or provide us with the name of your Licensing Officer at the TLO.
• Do you anticipate any patentable inventions arising from this research?

OSATT will provide the sponsor with an MIT Industrial Agreement for their review that reflects the research, as we understand it. Please contact OSATT as early as possible regarding industrial agreements. 

Your department should establish a financial review and control procedure based on your funding sources and relative risk. The department may decide to match receipts to every transaction, or to use a sampling procedure to verify expenses. See the VPF’s policy on Financial Review and Control for information that assists DLCs in performing a self-review of controls over financial systems and activities.

Request that the subrecipient provide a budget that separately details, year by year, the proposed project; funds that are requested from the prime sponsor; and the direct and indirect costs that are offered as cost sharing by the subrecipient. The subrecipient’s budget should provide the same level of detail that the DLCI provides for an MIT budget request. Please follow the instructions for entering cost sharing in the KC proposal as referenced in the KC eLearning module “KC Budget”

Mandatory committed (required by the sponsor in the proposal solicitation or in the award negotiation): The DLCI pays direct costs; MIT pays F&A costs.

Voluntary committed (committed in the proposal but not required in the proposal solicitation): The DLCI pays both direct and F&A costs.

Whitehead Institute (WIBR) is a separate entity from MIT but the MIT/WIBR affiliation agreement allows WI Faculty to submit proposals via the Institute as they also have appointments in the MIT Biology Department. These proposals would be for awards they would not be eligible to receive if they were to submit directly through Whitehead i.e. solicitations that must be submitted by an educational institution.

MIT accepts the proposal which is budgeted with WIBR direct and indirect costs using WIBR’s current rates but with an additional line item defined as “Subaward-first $25,000 subject to F&A”. MIT enters its own current F&A rate on $25,000 on that categorical budget line and submits the proposal. (e.g. in FY 2014 MIT would enter $25,000 x .56 = $14,000 on the budget line)

When an award is received in MIT the account is set up for the WIBR PI in the Biology Department who will process a requisition to issue an award to WIBR to allow for the pass through of funds from MIT to WIBR. The Research Subaward Team then writes the subaward to the WIBR for the total funding minus the “Subaward-first $25,000 subject to F&A” line item amount.

WIBR submits regular invoices to MIT for payment, as well as whatever reports are required by the terms of the award.

If you have questions about this process please contact your Contract Administrator at RAS.

Please refer to the Project Monitoring section for a complete explanation.

Please refer to the Reporting and Closing Out an Award section for a complete explanation.