Industry Sponsored Institute Subawards
Participating Research Institutions and Associated Subawards
All, or at least the majority, of an Institute’s project/research funds should be allocated to UC Berkeley faculty. Institute-funded research may also be conducted entirely at Berkeley, or at Berkeley and at a collaborator’s site, or Berkeley may flow down the terms and conditions to other research institutions through subawards.
Where an Institute serves as a hub for engaging one or more universities with multiple subawards, and/or multiple funded projects under subawards, the administrative costs of managing a multi-university effort must be fully funded by the Institute.
In particular, the Institute’s budget should include surcharges where it is anticipated that there will be more than six subawards per year. A high volume of subawards is a cost not adequately recovered by IDC. Resources are needed to manage subawards, including: research administration, COI tracking, financial expenditure tracking for invoice approval, subaward compliance, invoicing, and changes (amendments) to subawards. Therefore, once Institute subawards reach a number of six per year, an administrative surcharge for each additional five subawards must be added to the ISI budget.
The following principles will help in planning for subawards.
- For overall funding in a given year, the amount of funds allocated to campus should be greater than the amount leaving campus in subawards.
- For specific research project proposals with a subaward, the amount of total project funds remaining on campus should be greater than the amount leaving campus in subawards.
- If the number of subawards exceeds six per year, a surcharge will be assessed. The surcharge will be calculated as the current campus F&A rate multiplied by the lesser of $25,000 or the value of the subaward, and will be assessed on year one, and on the fourth anniversary of the subaward thereafter.
- The Institute must have a plan for future subawards at the time of negotiation of the ISI Master Agreement.
The Master Sponsored Research Agreement will have a tier structure for adding surcharges for the number of subawards.
Tier 1: 1-5 subawards follows standard campus practice for subaward overhead.
Tier 2: 5-10 subawards. $15k is added as a surcharge to the budget.
Tier 3: 10+ subawards. $22k is added as a surcharge to the budget.
When the number of subaward requests increases, the Industry Alliances Office (IAO) will move the project to the next tier by IAO initiating an internal modification for the increasing funds. Surcharges for additional subawards will be invoiced from the master fund for the Institute. Funds get distributed to IPIRA and IPIRA distributes 15% to CGA.
