Every institution has internal processes for developing, costing and approving grant applications. While procedures vary between organisations, the principles outlined below are common across most UK universities and research institutes.

Engage with the right people

  • Research support office
  • Departmental finance teams
  • Departmental administrators
  • Collaborator and partner organisations

These people will help you put together the costings, make sure the correct funding scheme is used, and will help to arrange the necessary approvals. If you are the lead applicant, you will need to receive costings from any collaborators or partner organisations.

Understanding costing tools

Most institutions use internal costing systems, such as WorkTribe or PURE, to prepare funding applications. These tools calculate:

  • Salary costs and pay inflation
  • Estates costs
  • Equipment and consumables
  • Travel and dissemination costs
  • Institutional overheads (indirect costs)

The tool generates a budget that complies with both funder requirements and institutional policies.

What applicants need to know

  • Funders often have different eligible costs.
  • The figure entered into the costing tool is not always the amount requested from the funder.
  • Different funders award funding at different rates. For example, UKRI generally funds research council grants at 80% FEC, whereas many charitable funders do not pay overheads and instead fund eligible direct costs at 100%. DisCouRSE follows UKRI policy, since that is the source of our funding.

What is FEC?

Many UK funders operate using Full Economic Costing (FEC).

Full Economic Costing (FEC) represents the total cost of delivering a project, including:

  • Directly incurred costs (for example, staff employed on the project)
  • Directly allocated costs (shared across multiple projects or activities and based on estimates) including:
    • Estates costs
  • Indirect costs

UKRI provides more examples of what falls in these categories.

Funders do not always pay 100% of the FEC. Institutions may therefore contribute some costs themselves. You may see three columns within a costing tool: Cost to HEI (100% FEC plus inflation), Cost to Funder (the total value being requested), and Price to Funder (the amount expected to be awarded, for example 80% FEC for most UKRI research council grants).

When costing the application, it is important to cost using the correct role description as your institutional costing tool will automatically calculate overheads based on this. UKRI Guidance on roles and responsibilities is helpful here.

For applicants, the most important questions are:

  • What proportion of FEC will the funder cover?
  • Which costs can be charged to the grant?
  • Which costs must be absorbed by the institution?

Research support and finance teams can explain how these arrangements work within your organisation.

Supporting applications from RTPs

Funding opportunities have traditionally been associated with academic staff, but many funders increasingly recognise the value of applications led by research-enabling, technical and professional services colleagues. This is especially true for DisCouRSE!

As mentioned above, in 2023 UKRI changed the roles/responsibilities section, expanding the categories of project roles eligible to attract indirect and estates overheads to include Specialists, Technicians, and Professional Enabling Staff. This change helps to recognise the contribution of research-enabling and technical professionals while supporting more sustainable funding models.

For example, RTP roles such as a research software engineer, data scientist, project manager or other technical professional making a direct contribution to the delivery of research should generally be costed in a way that reflects their research role, rather than being treated simply as administrative support. Incorrect classification can result in an inaccurate representation of project resources and may affect the level of cost recovery available to the organisation.

Internal approval and sign-off

Most institutions require formal approval before submission. It is important that internal approval is received to avoid any delays if the grant is successful. Internal approvals can take longer than expected, particularly where commitments of institutional resources or matched funding are required.

Once a grant is awarded, a collaboration agreement will be required. This often involves raising a contract request through the same system used to prepare and approve the costing. For most UKRI grants, including the flexible fund administered through the DisCouRSE project, funding is paid to the lead institution, which is then responsible for distributing funds to project partners in accordance with the collaboration agreement.