What is PROFR and its intended purpose? 

PROFR is intended to recover the direct costs associated with the time a faculty PI will spend on a project throughout the academic year (i.e. supervising graduate students, directing the research activities, preparing reports, etc.), knowing that the time allocated during the summer is not typically reflective of the full time spent on the project.  Having Academic Year (AY) time in the project budget more accurately reflects the total time spent by a PI on the project as well as the distribution of time throughout the year.

PROFR is required on every sponsored research proposal unless the sponsor, by policy, will not permit AY time. Exceptions are listed below. PROFR is set to ensure a fair standard for all and to avoid case-by-case subjective determinations which would be harder to justify to auditors.

What is the requirement and value?

• requirement is met by T&R faculty Academic Year effort only

• a minimum of 7% of "Base for F&A Costs" within OSP Budget Template (also typically defined as Modified Total Direct Cost - MTDC)

• is not applied when Research (RSCH), Administrative (ADM), or Instructional (INST) faculty are PI (even with T&R faculty in budget as Co-PI)

PROFR can only be waived when:

• AY not allowed by sponsor (example: NSF organizational unit "Operational Engineering")

• Budget is primarily for student support. Any waiver is subject to department head approval.

What is the benefit of PROFR?

• 50% of PROFR charged to a sponsored project is returned to T&R faculty members each fiscal year using returned overhead dollars, which can be used at your discretion, i.e. class buyouts, etc.

• Overhead is also a valuable resource used to provide salary funding for staff positions, enhance new faculty start-up funding, funding for department operating expenses and faculty discretionary funds.