Add your line items, set your indirect cost rate, and get a funder-ready budget summary in seconds — no spreadsheet required. Download, copy, or print when you're done.
| Category | Description | Amount | Exclude MTDC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Direct Costs
Indirect Costs
Personnel + Fringe
Total Budget
100% of total
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Funders review your budget narrative as carefully as your proposal. Understanding the difference — and being able to defend every line — is half the battle.
Direct costs are expenses that can be identified specifically with a particular project. Personnel working on the grant, fringe benefits for those staff, travel to program sites, supplies consumed by the project, and consultant fees hired for specific deliverables are all direct costs. Every line item should pass the "but for" test: would you incur this cost but for this grant?
Indirect costs — also called F&A (facilities and administrative) costs — cover overhead that benefits multiple projects: rent, utilities, shared IT, accounting, HR, and general management. Rather than allocating them line by line, they are expressed as a percentage of Modified Total Direct Costs. Organizations that have not negotiated a federal rate may use a 10% de minimis rate under OMB Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200.414).
MTDC is the base to which you apply your indirect rate. It excludes equipment (items over $5,000 with a useful life >1 year), capital expenditures, patient care costs, tuition remission, rental costs for off-site facilities, the portion of each subcontract over $25,000, and scholarships. Add subawards under the "Contractual / Subawards" category and this calculator automatically counts only the first $25,000 of each toward MTDC; use the "Exclude MTDC" checkbox to fully remove equipment and capital items so your indirect total is accurate.
Fringe benefits — health insurance, retirement contributions, FICA, workers' compensation — are a direct cost when they can be attributed to grant-funded staff. They are typically expressed as a percentage of salary (a fringe benefit rate) and line-itemed separately. Many funders require you to show both the salary and the fringe rate calculation. If your organization has a negotiated fringe rate, use it; otherwise, use your actual costs for each benefit type.
Every line item in a grant budget should be justified in the budget narrative. Explain how each cost was calculated (e.g., "1.0 FTE Program Manager at $58,000 × 50% effort = $29,000"), why it is necessary to achieve the project goals, and how you determined the amount. Reviewers flag unsupported numbers quickly — a tight narrative turns a reasonable budget into a fundable one.
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