Budget Narrative

Enter the total cost for the project.

Tables can be imported into the budget narrative, but they import better from Word than from Excel. If you develop tables in Excel, you may want to import them into Word, and then into your application.

The budget narrative should explain in detail each expense category listed on the SF 424-A Budget form. The budget narrative must provide enough detail for reviewers to easily understand how costs were determined and how they relate to the tasks listed in the Statement of Work. There must be a relationship between work planned and performed to the costs incurred.

A sample budget narrative is available in Resources.

For each expense category, provide sufficient details so anyone reading the narrative will be able to understand how the total cost for the category was determined.

For example:

Personnel: List the personnel who will work on the project, their annual salary, the FTE’s they will commit to the project, and the net salary that will be charged to the project. Also discuss how the key positions relate to the specific program activities or results.

Fringe Benefits: For each person working on the project, indicate the percent of time or FTE they will commit to working on the project, their fringe benefits rate, and the resulting fringe benefit amount that will be paid by the project.

Travel: Describe the purpose of and justification for travel required for your program and how it relates to your statement of work. To the best of your ability, for each workshop or event; enter the number of people that will travel to the workshop; the airfare or mileage necessary for each person to travel to the meeting, the expected hotel and meal expenses, and any other miscellaneous travel expenses. Provide as much detail as possible. If you know names of the individuals who will be presenting and the location of both the workshops and their workplace, specifically providing their mileage or airfare will be advantageous. Keep in mind that travel for consultants should be shown in the contracts category along with the consultant’s fee.

Other expense categories: Provide as much detail as necessary to fully justify expenses under the supplies, contractual, or other categories. Provide justification for supply items and relate them to specific program objectives. Break out these expenses per workshop or conference as necessary as they may be designed for different topics or audiences.

Indirect charges: Indirect costs are limited to ten (10) percent of the total direct cost of the cooperative partnership agreement. When preparing budgets, applicants should limit their requests for recovery of indirect costs to the lesser of their institution’s official negotiated indirect cost rate or 10 percent of the total direct costs.

The budget narrative must also include the estimated cost per producer participant.