I recently learned that many universities require a certain percentage of all grants go to institutional overhead unless the grant maker has a policy against it. So grant-makers can save a lot of money by publicly posting a policy limiting the portion of a grant that can go to overhead.
As far as I know all western universities take overheads, although the percentage varies a lot. I used to be at the Biology Department in Lund University and they took 50%!
But I think that refusing overheads is only really an option on the margin, for foundations and individual funders. Most researchers get the majority of their funding from government funding agencies (e.g. NIH, NSF) and as far as I know these all pay full overheads, but universities actually need these overheads to fund their operating expenses. I don’t have first hand knowledge of this, but my understanding is that if overheads are 50% and you get $100 grant that doesn’t pay overheads, the University actually has to source $50 from elsewhere in order to administer your grant.
I’ve never heard of a University turning down an grant without overheads, but I have heard that bringing in a majority of overhead free money reflects poorly on an academic during a career review for promotion/tenure/new job etc.
OPP funds transformative basic science and might be able to make some suggestions about how to allocate the money.
https://www.openphilanthropy.org/focus-area/scientific-research/transformative-basic-science
Also, if you donate to researcher at a University, try to make sure it goes directly to them and their institution doesn’t take overheads from it.
I recently learned that many universities require a certain percentage of all grants go to institutional overhead unless the grant maker has a policy against it. So grant-makers can save a lot of money by publicly posting a policy limiting the portion of a grant that can go to overhead.
As far as I know all western universities take overheads, although the percentage varies a lot. I used to be at the Biology Department in Lund University and they took 50%!
But I think that refusing overheads is only really an option on the margin, for foundations and individual funders. Most researchers get the majority of their funding from government funding agencies (e.g. NIH, NSF) and as far as I know these all pay full overheads, but universities actually need these overheads to fund their operating expenses. I don’t have first hand knowledge of this, but my understanding is that if overheads are 50% and you get $100 grant that doesn’t pay overheads, the University actually has to source $50 from elsewhere in order to administer your grant.
I’ve never heard of a University turning down an grant without overheads, but I have heard that bringing in a majority of overhead free money reflects poorly on an academic during a career review for promotion/tenure/new job etc.