What are Direct Costs?
Direct costs are items that can be directly charged to the grant, including:
- Salaries & Wages
- Fringe Benefits
- Consultants
- Travel
- Equipment
- Materials & Supplies
- Subrecipients
What are Indirect Costs?
Indirect costs are items that “include those things essential to support sponsored activities that cannot be specifically identified and directly charged or attributable to a particular research grant or contract”. Examples include heating and cooling the building where the research is done and building maintenance.
Indirect costs have a few names and abbreviations; they all mean the same thing:
- Indirect Costs(IDC)
- Overhead
- Facilities & Administration (F&A)
What is UNT Indirect Costs(IDC)?
- 48.5% Research - On campus
- 48.5% Instruction - On campus
- 31.5% Other Sponsored Activities - On campus
- 26% Off campus
Sponsor may have published IDC limitation that may need to be followed (i.e.: 0%, 10%) instead of using UNT’s negotiated rates listed above.
What do MTDC & TDC mean?
MTDC stands for Modified Total Direct Costs
- Some items are excluded from IDC base calculation - i.e.: tuition, equipment over $5k, subcontract amounts over the first $25k.
TDC stands for Total Direct Cost
- All items are included in the IDC base calculation. IDC is calculated on every cost element, including tuition and equipment over $5k.
Most personnel items have associated fringe benefits costs which are known by a few different names and abbreviations; they mean the same thing:
- Employee Benefits
- Fringe Benefits
UNT’s FB rates changes every year. UNT has established an average Fringe Benefit rate to use for proposal budget development. An average fringe benefit rate is set for the below 3 categories of employees. Current Fringe Benefit Rates to use for proposal budgets can be found on the VPRI Website here.
- Faculty
- Staff
- Students