I've run into that same problem with competition with local businesses.  Of course waiving IDC to be more competitive is just stupid and shouldn't be considered, but the appearance to undercutting the local businesses is a really hot potato.  I found that telling the on-campus people that IDC was not their decision to make (Or jsut "NO") worked well as long as I was consistent.  Of course,aking yoru bosses consistent is something you can't control.

Spanky

----- Original Message -----
From: "Beth W Seaton" <xxxxxx@WIU.EDU>
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Sent: Monday, March 2, 2009 12:50:19 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [RESADM-L] contracts for services & F&A

We have a division on campus that performs technological services to several outside agencies on a work for hire basis.  These services might be creating on-line training materials, hosting websites, or similar types of projects.  Sometimes the funding agencies are state agencies, sometime local educational agencies, and sometimes for-profit companies.

I believe that we should always charge full facilities and administrative (indirect) costs on these projects, but the division in question argues that we should waive a portion or all of our overhead because we are providing services to state or local educational agencies.  Sometimes they say they want to waive the F&A just to "be more competitive."

Besides the obvious fact that we would be under-recovering our true cost of operation, isn't there a problem with us waiving a portion of our costs and thereby possibly undercutting for-profit firms that might be able to bid on these contracts?

Any advice is welcome.

Beth Seaton
Western Illinois University
309-298-1191

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 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
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