Dave, F&A costs are real.  They cannot be measured precisely on a project
basis, but can be measured accurately in the aggregate and allocated to
each project on a formula basis.  When we receive reimbursement for F&A
costs already expended, that's merely revenue for the institution.  The
institution can allocate it as it wishes; the paying agency has no interest
in how we use it.  Some institutions feed it back directly to the cost
sources, but many cover the cost sources from other more general revenues
and can distribute recoveries in a manner aimed at augmenting the project
effort.  Repeat, the payor has no ties on how we spend the revenue.  (Note:
a small portion of recovered F&A must be used for capital costs of research
space.)

Chuck

At 01:03 PM 12/12/00 -0600, you wrote:
>I agree. Whenever you make a statement that you 'are giving F&A back to the
>faculty' (or areas that did not generate the cost to begin with) its
>critical to be very careful with terminology. If you are including costs in
>your F&A calculation that are not really there, or are always paid from some
>other source, and thus have 'spare' money to redistribute back to the
>faculty one would think that you are in a precarious position if you are
>ever audited by the feds. If the funds being 'given back' to the faculty are
>really excess revenue less expenses from some other part of the system and
>if these funds are being used to conduct research, they will have an impact
>on the F&A calculation in the following year as they probably should be
>treated like any other grant and should be contributing to the indirect
>services they use.
>
>I know that many institutions have a policy of 'giving back F&A', but I've
>never really understood how this works within the indirect cost calculation
>framework/regulations.
>
>-David
>
>David A Higginson, ACMA
>Vice President for Information Systems
>Arkansas Children's Hospital
>1120 Marshall Street
>Little Rock, AR 72202
>(501) 320-3757
>xxxxxx@exchange.ach.uams.edu
> > Learn more about us at:  <http://www.archildrens.org/>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: David R. Fielder [mailto:xxxxxx@COOPER.CPMC.ORG]
>Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2000 12:10 PM
>To: xxxxxx@HRINET.ORG
>Subject: Re: F&A Question
>
>
>If we all actually credited IDC recovery to the actual cost centers that
>pay for the costs that the feds are supposed to be reimbursing us for maybe
>PIs/Faculty would consider the process less of a shell game?
>
>         Minor Rant,
>
>                 David
>===================================================================
>Mr. David R. Fielder                    tel: 415.600.1600
>Vice President, Research                fax: 415.600.1753
>California Pacific Medical Center   email: xxxxxx@cooper.cpmc.org
>Research Institute                 website: http://www.cpmc.org
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