Good afternoon, everyone!

Does anyone have any experience in dealing with NSF’s policy on food as an unallowable expense? The exact wording from NSF’s Grant Proposal Guide is:

“No NSF funds may be spent on meals or coffee breaks for intramural meetings of an organization or any of its components, including, but not limited to, laboratories, departments, and centers.”

Do you take this to mean that food is never to be paid for with grant funds if the meal is on campus and for campus consumption? One of our PI’s has written an orientation into her budget for student recipients of grant-funded scholarships, and some of the orientation cost is for food to feed the students attending the orientation. Since it’s on-campus for members of the college community, does that make this an unallowable cost? Or would/could this fit into a category outside of what NSF’s policy describes?

I would appreciate your opinions, interpretations, or anecdotal experiences with this particular policy.

Thank you!

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Suzanne Happell

Assistant Director of Sponsored Programs

Otterbein College

xxxxxx@otterbein.edu