If the U.S. National Science Foundation is considering awarding a grant or cooperative agreement, it will perform a proposal budget review to ensure the budget is reasonable and realistic for accomplishing the proposed activities. For selected proposal budgets, NSF may perform a deeper analysis.
Proposal budget reviews typically evaluate the following:
- Overall reasonableness: Assessing whether amounts of the proposal budget line items, such as subawards, appear to correspond to the objectives of the proposed award.
- Allowability: Evaluating selected costs to determine their allowability based upon the applicable federal cost principles, NSF-specific terms and conditions and award-specific terms and conditions (if any).
- Allocability: Assessing whether individual costs are assignable or chargeable to one or more cost objectives based on relative benefits received. A cost is allocable if it is incurred specifically for the project. A cost is also allocable if it is necessary to the overall operation of a business, even though a direct relationship to any cost objective cannot be shown; these types of costs are generally not allowable as a direct charge but may be allocated based on established indirect cost rates.
Awardee organizations are responsible for providing accurate and complete information regarding their proposed budgets and for promptly responding to requests for additional information.
Upon completion of the budget review, NSF's grant specialists make the final determination on the overall size and specific amounts included in the final award budget.