Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university PI commits 5 percent of unfunded effort as voluntary cost share to strengthen a proposal.
- Is an instance
A department voluntarily contributes equipment time worth $40,000 to the project budget.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An overhead waiver by the sponsor is not voluntary cost share by the recipient.
- Not an instance
A casual mention of institutional support in a proposal narrative, without a budget commitment, is not auditable cost share.
Editorial commentary
Voluntary cost share, once committed in a proposal, becomes auditable and must be tracked as if mandatory. Many US universities have policies discouraging or prohibiting voluntary cost share except in defined strategic cases, because of the administrative burden and the precedent it creates for future awards. NIH and NSF have historically discouraged voluntary committed cost share in peer review. Voluntary uncommitted cost share (effort beyond what is in the budget) is similarly tracked but with looser reporting in most regimes.
References
- US NIH Grants Policy Statement; NSF Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide.
Also known as
Voluntary matching · Voluntary committed cost share · VCC
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Cost share (voluntary)"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Cost share (voluntary)",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary",
"description": "A contribution to a sponsored project beyond what the sponsor requires, committed by the recipient institution typically to strengthen a proposal's competitiveness or demonstrate institutional support.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-lifecycle-and-financial-vocabulary/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary",
"sameAs": [
"Voluntary matching",
"Voluntary committed cost share",
"VCC"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
