NSF Budget Justification Guidelines
 
Our boilerplates and sample text for selected applications may be used as a starting point for your applications, and should be modified to meet sponsor's requirements and to align with your proposed research plan. The following guidelines were developed to with creating a budget justification for an NSF budget. Please also refer to the Budget Justification Guide and Boilerplate for more general information on your budget justification.
 
NSF Budget
NSF guidelines are very similar to the NIH detailed budget justification guidelines. Requirements specific to the NSF include:
 
Page limit NSF budget justification typically limited to three (3) pages. Check the specific solicitation to verify. More>>
 
Voluntary committed cost sharing Unless otherwise specified in the solicitation, NSF prohibits the inclusion of voluntary committed cost sharing (e.g. by the institution, by the laboratory, or any other internal/external source). More>>
 
Personnel Costs The justification of this cost category must perfectly correspond to the personnel listed on the budget. Project personnel NOT requesting salary, such as the PI/HOL, must be excluded from the budget page and from the budget justification section. Specifically, an unfunded PI must not be listed in Section A of the budget. This can be done by clicking on their name in the NSF budget form and then clicking "Check to remove". The PI's name will remain on the proposal's Cover Sheet.
 
References to salary (or lack of salary) requested are NOT allowed in the NSF budget justification as this would be considered voluntary committed cost sharing which is prohibited by the NSF unless specifically permitted in the solicitation. Contributions and roles of any unpaid PI any any other unpaid personnel on the project (i.e. pre-approved RU personnel and and non-RU collaborators as applicable) should be clearly described in the following sections of the proposal: The Project Description, and the Facilities, Equipment, and Other Resources sections. This latter section must contain an aggregated description of the resources that the institution and its collaborators will provide to the project (infrastructure, personnel, other), should it be funded. While the description must be narrative and must not include any quantifiable financial information, it is fine to include he percent effort or number of person months that the PI and/or other unfunded personnel plan to work on the project.
 
Unfunded collaborations should be documented in a letter of commitment from each collaborator. Such letters are provided in the supplementary documentation section of FastLane. (NSF clarification from May 10, 2013: Letters of commitment are normally allowed if solicitations include the following language or similar statements: "If there are other researchers whose scientific contributions and/or resources are essential to the achievement of the vision, their commitments to work with the individual should be included as Supplementary Documents." Since the Facilities, Equipment and other Resources section should include information on the resources provided by the collaborators, both funded and unfunded collaborators should be described in that section and their letters of commitment uploaded to the Supplementary Documentation section of the proposal.)

NSF requires that the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section be a narrative description with NO quantifiable financial information whatsoever, or the proposal will be returned without review. More>>

Salary Compensation for Senior Personnel  As a general policy, NSF limits salary compensation requested in the proposal budget for senior personnel to no more than two months of their regular salary in any one year. This limit includes salary compensation received from all NSF-funded grants.
 
Other Expense Items  These items are described similarly as in an NIH budget justification. However, any project costs for which there are no funds requested should be detailed solely on the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section of the grant and not on the budget justification as this would be considered voluntary committed cost sharing, which is prohibited by the NSF.
 
 
 
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