ALTER maintains a policy that limits overhead of grants that we make as follows:
- For universities and colleges, the overhead may not exceed 10% of total direct (i.e. non-overhead) costs
ALTER defines overhead as expenses related to the general operations and administration of an organization, which are not directly allocated to or identified with the specific person or project receiving the grant.
Sample Calculation
To explain how our indirect costs policy works, imagine the grantee requested a $110 grant, with $10 going to university overhead. This would fit exactly within our policy, since the direct costs (direct costs = total – indirect costs) are $100, and the indirect costs are 10/100=10%. However, if the total grant amount was only $100, the direct costs grant would be $90, and the overhead would be above the 10% limit.