F&A stands for facilities and administrative costs, also referred to as indirect costs or overhead. F&A costs are reimbursements for expenses that are incurred for common or joint objectives necessary to conduct research, scholarship, and creative work. Thus, the F&A FIU receives is based on costs that FIU has already incurred in furtherance of these endeavors and is not associated with the F&A expense of a specific grant award or research project. Examples of F&A costs include utilities, compliance with federal research integrity standards and regulations around human and animal research, personnel to manage shared research core facilities, building maintenance and operations, security, general purpose supplies and equipment, insurance, and essential administrative staff expenses to prepare, submit, and manage grants (e.g., Sponsored Projects Services and Departmental Grant Administrators).

Since 1991, there has been a federally imposed cap in the administrative component of F&A of 26%, which applies only to universities. Thus, even though administrative requirements for research administration have steadily increased since 1991, the university only receives 26% for administrative costs. FIU’s current federally negotiated rate is 47.5% for on-campus research and 26% for off-campus research. Since many grants have lower rates (e.g., training grants which tend to be 8%), and there are many exclusions on direct cost items that are excluded from charging F&A (e.g., equipment, tuition, participant support), the effective F&A rate FIU receives from all grants at a given time tends to be between 22% to 24%.

At FIU, the Office of Research and Economic Development (ORED) is responsible for the distribution of F&A funds to cover the cost of research activities. ORED provides direct financial support throughout the university to cover research-related costs, and also allocates 10% of F&A to colleges, 15% to select centers and 5% to Principal Investigators. These funds are used by Colleges and Centers to cover their costs of managing the grants, provide fiscal oversight and support to their researchers.

ORED reinvests F&A to grow and expand the institutional research enterprise, including:

• Investment in research core facilities through central allocation. Core facilities minimize research costs by providing shared use of very expensive equipment and technicians to maintain and operate these instruments.
• “Start-up” funding for research-intensive faculty, which includes lab renovations, equipment, research personnel, etc.
• Funding for essential research development and administration to enable FIU to grow and efficiently manage its funding portfolio and comply with the large number of federal regulations, such as the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for human clinical trials, animal welfare and care, export controls, etc.
• In addition, ORED provides resources to increase opportunities for graduate and  undergraduate student research.