Background/Rationale

The bridge funding pool will help maintain essential personnel and operational expenses for key programs that are important contributors to the sponsored research grant portfolios of colleges, centers, and institutes.  Since the intent is to maintain programs within academic units it seems most appropriate to create a shared pool from the F&A distributions to academic units, including the distributions to Cascades, and central contingency funds.  F&A recovery allocations that support key research infrastructure and services will not be included.

The pool is established by an assessment to the estimated F&A distributions, rather than in a change to the distribution rate of 26% to most units.  An assessment approach is an easier and more direct approach than recalculating the returned overhead percentage each year.

The annual distributions will be monitored over time to assess the degree to which units are benefitting from the contributions they make to the pool.  The process will be reviewed after five years to assess its efficacy.