Veronica M. Keane
St. Peter's College
Figuring out how much a project will cost might seem straightforward: get prices, list them, and add up the costs. Such a process, however, could spell trouble because of institutional requirements that must be met. Institutions each have their own protocols for who purchases goods and services and from whom and who pays for what. This presentation will suggest some of the intricacies of budgeting for grant proposals.
A key to estimating a realistic budget is finding out how your campus works because institutional peculiarities determine what monies you will need to acquire, how much goods and services will cost, and even how you arrive at estimated costs. The following scenarios will illustrate my point:
1. I am setting up a lab for which I need security. Should I include this in my budget proposal? The common sense answer is, "Yes." In my school, however, Security has a budget for what I need. Hence, in a proposal I wrote, I did not have to include the cost for security. This reduced the amount of funding that I needed to look for.
2. I know the total cost of constructing and equipping a lab. Is this sum the cost of the project ? Not necessarily. Depending on institutional requirements, I may have to add to this cost a certain percentage (75% in one institution -- they don't get many grants) to cover administrative expenses. If I do not include this because I don't know about it, my funding will fall short of the amount I need.
3. I look at mail order catalogues or I get bids for 25 computers and use the numbers from the lowest bidder. My institution, however, has a contract to buy computers only from a certain supplier, whose prices, in the case of the computers I need, happen to be higher than my lowest bidder. Because I have to buy the computers from my institution's supplier, I wind up with insufficient funds for the project.
4. The campus architect gives me a price for the cost of the rehabilitation of an existing space. Physical Plant decides that the job will be done in-house for which, strangely enough, there is a 25% mark-up. I will wind up with insufficient funds.
The scenarios I've presented are based on actual institutional practices. For reasons such as these, it is important to know how your institution works. Unfortunately, you will probably not find this information spelled out in one document or even in a number of documents. Hence, you will need to hunt down the information or, more practically, you will need to find people who know the ins and outs of your institution.
I offer several suggestions to do this:
If your campus has someone whose job it is to help faculty get grants, consult with that person to find out:
1. What kind of information you need to provide for the grant you're applying for. Typically, grants from foundations require less detail than government grants.
2. What your institution's policies are regarding funding.
A good way to find out which campus offices you will need to deal with to get the information you need for your budget estimate is to (hopefully) find someone on campus who has set up a lab before you. Or, find and make friends with a knowledegable person in Academic Computing and/or someone on campus who is interested in and works with computers and who has been around long enough to know how things are done on campus.
As you cultivate sources of information, you will begin to have a clearer idea of the kinds of information you will need to make up your budget. Assuming that you need a space, rehabilitation of an existing space, hardware, software, networking, communications, furnishings and security system, you will probably have to deal with several different offices on campus such as:
1. Whoever allocates the use of space on campus (not necessarily the person who assigns classes to classrooms, which are spaces that have previously been allocated for that particular purpose)
2. The campus architect, New Construction, Building Rehab or whatever office on campus is in charge of building the lab for you. This part of the project may involve more than one office. They will draw up the plans for you and give you cost estimates. You need to be able to tell them exactly what you want. Remember that as the person who will be teaching in the lab you are the expert regarding your needs. Do not trust anyone's good judgment or expertise because their ideas of what a lab/classroom ought to be and do are probably different from yours.
3. Academic Computing/Computer Services or whatever your school calls them.
You may need to work with several offices such as Instructional Computing, Campus Networking, and so forth. It will help if you make them feel that they have a stake in your project. You should:
* Explain what you want the hardware and the software to do for you. Be as thorough and as exact as you can
* Ask for brand names, model numbers, specifications. They'll also probably be able to give you prices
4. Purchasing/ Whoever orders furniture for your institution. This office should have catalogues and suppliers that they have dealt with and can recommend. Your school may have a policy regarding quality of furniture as well as furniture that will accomodate students with physical disabilities. Purchasing might be able to advise you on these matters; if not, there's probably someone else on campus who knows about these. Purchasing should also be able to advise you about compensating for changes in furniture prices from year to year.
After getting all the information that you need from your institution and drawing up a budget from information gathered, I would, just to make sure I have everything everything covered, consult with friends in the Computers and Composition community who have set up labs. The experience they have with various computer systems and lab setups is invaluable. They are also extremely generous in sharing their knowledge.
Finally, with the state of technology constantly advancing as it does, your specifications for hardware and software should include a note to the effect that you reserve the right, at the time funding is received, to upgrade hardware and software to whatever is then current. Since prices for more powerful computers tend to remain the same as the ones they replace, the original estimate should serve you. Otherwise, when the funds are received, whoever does purchasing for your institution may just go ahead and buy outdated equipment for you. And then you're stuck with an outdated lab before you've even begun.