Grant Guru

Your developed budget usually is placed on a budget form provided for you in the Request for Proposal (RFP). Most budget forms list the various categories of direct costs and a line item for indirect costs. Sometimes these kinds of forms separate the amount requested and place a separate column for amount supported by your local educational agency (LEA) or other sources. For example, in your plan, the project director's salary might be split half from grant sources and half as "in-kind" support from your LEA. Perhaps supplies to complete the project will be donated from several local sources. These would also become "in-kind" support.

Some budgets leave space for you to add a comment. The grant RFP/directions may instruct you to provide a line-item description and/or justification for each expenditure in every budget category. So instead of saying one project director, you would elaborate by saying one project direct and include some detail. This line item detail helps clarify your expenditures. This detail may include the percentage of a full time equivalent the director will work, the number of days or hours working on the project, and perhaps a daily or hourly rate. Likewise, instead of just saying materials and supplies, your line item detail might list major categories such as printing costs, software licenses, cost of books, binders, paper, and toner cartridges. Each item would appear on a separate line. The more complete the detail is, the better. For example, instead of "travel costs, $600"; it is better to state, "travel, per diem, $150 per day for two days times two trips."

Some grants limit your expenses in certain areas. It is not uncommon to see in an RFP something like this, "note, the costs for computers, furniture, equipment and capitol expenses are not allowed." Equipment is usually defined as an expense greater than $500 and is the kind of an item that you could place an inventory tag on. For example, a $100 ink-jet printer would be a supply. So would a $600 video card. A video projector costing $800 would be equipment.

Some proposals require you to fill out a series of budget forms. The directions often state your task as follows. Provide a budget and a budget narrative for the first two years of the grant for all sites; include, as appropriate, salaries, benefits, books, materials, supplies, services and other operating expenditures, travel and capitol outlay to be acquired with grant funding. Provide a description of each object of expenditure in sufficient detail to give grant readers a complete picture of how monies will be allocated. A recent grant I completed went even further and asked the writer to account for how a minimum of 25% of the total amount of the grant was allocated for high-quality professional development.

Let me show you how this works. For a regional consortium grant that I wrote several years ago, I placed $202,386 into certificated personnel salaries in year one of a two-year grant. My explanation (line item detail) included the following: (1.) XYZ School District is the LEA for the project which includes the following four districts: ABC Elementary, DEF Unified, GHI Unified, and JKL Unified. We will contract with MNO School District for the services of the Project Coordinator, 1 FTE, 183 days plus ten additional days at a daily rate of $392.40. This rate is anticipated to rise in year 2 of the project due to salary scale adjustments and/or cost of living adjustment. (2.) In year one, $36,000 pays for $2,000 stipends to the 18 coach/mentors involved in the project. $22,000 will be used for sub-days for professional development and $55,500 will pay for extra duty pay for staff development. In year two, $36,000 will go for coach/mentors, $18,000 for sub days for professional development and $30,000 for extra duty pay.

Here is a second example for a proposal involving two school districts. For Certificated Salaries, ABC is the LEA and fiscal agent for the consortium of two school districts, ABC Unified (4 middle schools) and DEF Unified (1 middle school). The project will hire one project coordinator (1 FTE) for the first year of the grant. Personnel costs include: a project coordinator’s salary (estimated at $85,000 for a teacher on special assignment for a 185 day work year plus 10 extra days for year one; a stipend for each project coach/mentor (two per site, $2,000 per year per person, for a cost of $20,000 in both years one and two); substitute days, approximately 150 for professional development ($15,000 a year for both years one and year two); and extra duty pay of $25,000 in year one and year two ($5,000 per site, each year) for project activities at established districts rate (currently $32.00 per hour).

The second form in both of these grants asked for a budget narrative. Because my detail was so complete, I simply recapped some of the early provided material. This is how I handled this second form. "The budget form presented the overall consortium budget and each school budget as well as a project coordination budget. The explanations detail the expenditures on each page. This form recaps some of the previously presented material." I then went on to recap the major points. Most grants however, will have only one budget form and the RFP will ask you to highlight the budget within the narrative. This section is known as the budget narrative.