The last two Institutions I have been with have been private and not state
affiliated.  They treated Indirect Cost reimbursement differently.

At a private university in a large northeastern city, Indirect costs are
treated as unrestricted revenue, as it should be.  We then had a IDC return
formula that returned, at the department level, 20% of the last three years
average IDC reimbursement for research projects only.  Training IDC was not
included in the formula.  These funds were used to promote research at the
discretion of the department chair.  The remainder of the reimbursement is
used by the university to offset some of the cost of research because there
is no subsidy as there is with a state university.

Currently I am with a private independent non-profit research institution
and since we don't have a tuition revenue stream or our state subsidy, the
IDC reimbursement is retained by the Institution.    The facilities portion
however is actually set aside in our Plant Fund, to fund the replacement
costs of our building and equipment.

Charlie Tardivo
Director of Grant Administration and Accounting Operations
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Cambridge  MA  02142
phone--617-258-5107
xxxxxx@wi.mit.edu