Response to Nature Story on Indirect Costs
Note: JSMF Vice President Susan Fitzpatrick responds to the recent Nature story on indirect cost recovery. A less space constrained version of the letter is below.Responding to the recent Nature story on indirect cost recovery it is important to clarify James S. McDonnell Foundation (JSMF) policy concerning indirect cost recovery. Although JSMF does not allow applicant institutions to include indirect costs as a component of budget requests, it is wrong to brand JSMF’s stance a “refusal” to fund indirect costs. JSMF, like many private foundations, considers it inappropriate for institutions to expect private funders to provide indirect costs. It is unfortunate that a misunderstanding of the history of indirect costs and the reasons for their recovery from government agencies continues to strain relations between universities and private funders. In the US, university indirect cost recovery is negotiated with federal funding agencies because the federal government made the decision to carry on much of the US-funded national research agenda on university campuses. The resulting partnership between the federal funding agencies and research universities acknowledges that an arrangement allowing universities to recover some, but not all, of the indirect costs associated with carrying out sponsored research is appropriate because a core mission of universities, along with education, is the creation of new knowledge through research and scholarship. Independent of the existence of federal grant programs, universities have an intrinsic mandate to encourage and support faculty scholarship and to offer research opportunities for students. Grants from private funders, such a JSMF, are helping universities fulfill and succeed at their core missions. Foundation grants provide funds for portions of faculty salaries, student stipends, the purchase of equipment and supplies, and other direct expenses that in the absence of private grants would otherwise be funded solely from university coffers. In other words, foundation grants are budget relieving, not budget additive. Providing for indirect costs is incompatible with this traditional view of the foundation-university relationship.
Susan M. Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.
Vice President, James S. McDonnell Foundation