| NIH requires modular format budgets for all R01, R03, R15 and R21 applications with budgets up to $250,000 direct costs/year, unless otherwise stipulated in a program announcement.
Rather than submitting detailed line-item budgets, the applicant requests funds in increments of $25,000 “modules.” Up to ten modules can be requested annually for direct costs. Applications requesting higher amounts of funding must include a detailed budget. The same number of modules should be requested in each year of the project. If you need to vary the number of modules, your budget justification must explain why. Equipment purchases and significant changes in the number of personnel or percent of effort for personnel over the years are examples of justifications for a different number of modules. NIH anticipates that unexpended funds from the early years will be carried-forward to cover costs in the later years of the project. Therefore, NIH will not accept a deviation in the number of modules in order to cover adjustments to salaries and other costs due to annual merit or COLA increases or inflation. - Estimating the Budget: A budget spreadsheet for all project years must be submitted to ORD with the routed proposal. This spreadsheet is for internal review purposes only, so that we can comply with the NIH requirement that institutions "are required to allocate and account for costs related to their awards by category within their institutional accounting systems."
Modular budget justifications
NIH does not require the use of a form for modular budgets, but they do expect the presentation to be similar to their suggested format, which presents the number of modules requested by year in tabular form at the top of the page with narrative budget justifications below.
NIH stipulates that the only budget categories that will be accepted in modular budget justifications are: personnel, explanation of a deviation in the number of modules, and consortium (subcontract) costs. No specific dollar amounts should be quoted in the narrative. Do not provide justification narrative for any other type of expense (supplies, travel, etc.). Equipment only needs to be justified if it requires you to request a different number of modules in one or more years. NIH has announced that applications that do not comply with the formatting guidelines may be rejected without review. top | | |
