For over 10 years now Colorado State has distributed recovered indirect costs
along the lines of:
 40% returned to the College Deans for "in support of research."  This
is the departmental administration portion plus some more, which we call
"Resources for Scholarly Programs."  Deans use it as "bridge" money,
occasionally travel related to attracting new funding, college contributions
to matching or cost-sharing, etc.  Each of our 8 colleges distributes it
differently, with at least one passing a portion down to the dept that
generated it, for similar use.  But I think most of them spend the monies
centrally from the college level, not the dept or PI.
 6.5% goes to the Vice President for Research.  It is used for start-up
or attractor packages, cost-sharing (in addition to another pool, not related
to indirect costs, for equipment cost-sharing), partial funding for faculty
who are invited speakers at international conferences, etc.
 $50,000 (considering increase to $100,000)/year transferred to the
Dean of the Graduate School to fund the Faculty Research Grants Program, an
on-campus competitive mini-grants program for newer or less experienced
faculty or faculty in fields traditionally unsupported externally.  These
should be pilot studies or similar, and the faculty must indicated for what
outside funding he/she will be applying subsequently.   Several years ago I
looked at 3 years of FRG awards to see if external funding had resulted from
FRG awards (just one measure of "effectiveness"), but it was virtually
impossible to tell from paper trails.

................................................................
Celia S. Walker
Assistant to VP Research      INTERNET:xxxxxx@vines.colostate.edu
Colorado State University     TEL:303/491-6355   DESK:303/491-7784
Ft. Collins, CO  80523        FAX:303/491-6147