Almost every NIH and NSF grant application requires a section describing the institutional environment available to support the proposed work — at NIH it is called Facilities & Other Resources (with a separate Equipment attachment); at NSF it is called Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources, defined in the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG), Chapter II. Both agencies require it on nearly every proposal type, both review it, and both routinely get confused with the Budget Justification — a mix-up that can cost a reviewer’s confidence even when the science is strong. This guide covers what the section is actually for, how NIH’s and NSF’s versions differ from each other, how to structure it, and how it differs from the budget documents it sits next to.
What the Section Is Meant to Demonstrate
Neither agency scores this section as an independent, numbered review criterion the way they score significance or approach. Instead, it functions as supporting evidence for a broader judgment reviewers are already required to make: does the applicant institution — labs, equipment, computing, clinical infrastructure, administrative support, collaborating sites — actually have the capacity to carry out the work as proposed. NIH’s own instructions describe it as documenting only “those resources directly applicable to the proposed work,” including their capacities, pertinent capabilities, relative proximity, and extent of availability. It is a capacity statement, not a sales pitch and not an itemized cost list.
That distinction matters because reviewers read it skeptically in one specific way: a Facilities section that lists resources with no evident connection to the proposed methods reads as boilerplate copied from a template, and a thin or missing one on a proposal that clearly needs specialized infrastructure (a BSL-3 suite, an MRI core, a field station) raises a real feasibility question. The section earns its keep by being specific and proportionate to what the proposed work actually requires — not by being long.
NIH: the “Facilities & Other Resources” Attachment
At NIH, Facilities & Other Resources is a required PDF attachment on most application types (R01, R15, R21, K-series, and others), submitted alongside — but separate from — the Equipment attachment, which lists major equipment already available for the project. Per NIH’s own page-limits guidance, this attachment has no stated page limit, though “no limit” is not an invitation to pad it — reviewers still expect a concise, relevant document, and NIH provides a real sample Facilities & Other Resources attachment that runs to a page or two, not many.
NIH applications are evaluated against five core review criteria — Significance, Investigator(s), Innovation, Approach, and Environment. The Environment criterion is where the Facilities & Other Resources attachment does its work: reviewers use it to judge whether the scientific environment, institutional support, and unique features of the setting (existing collaborations, subject populations, specialized facilities) will contribute to the probability of success. A proposal can score well on Approach and still draw a reviewer note under Environment if the facilities description doesn’t credibly support the methods described in the Specific Aims and Research Strategy.
Applicants conventionally organize the NIH attachment by resource category — commonly Laboratory, Clinical, Animal, Computer, Office, and Other, using only the categories that are actually relevant to the proposed work — followed by a short “Major Equipment” note if that’s not being handled entirely by the separate Equipment attachment. For multi-PI, subcontract, or consortium applications, each performance site typically gets its own subsection, since reviewers need to see that the resource picture holds at every site doing substantive work, not just the lead institution.
NSF: the “Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources” Section
NSF’s version is a required supplementary document defined in PAPPG Chapter II, and it comes with one hard, distinctive rule NIH’s does not: it “must be narrative in nature and must not include any quantifiable financial information” — no dollar figures, no itemized costs, anywhere in the document. It should give an aggregated description of the internal and external resources, both physical and personnel, that are directly applicable to the proposed work.
NSF reviewers do evaluate this section, but as supporting evidence for the two actual merit-review criteria — Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts — specifically the sub-question of whether the PI has, or has ready access to, adequate resources to carry out the proposed activities. It is not scored as a criterion of its own, but a proposal that leaves an obvious resource gap unaddressed (specialized instrumentation the methods depend on, a field site, a compute cluster) can weaken the reviewers’ confidence in feasibility under both criteria. NSF also treats the resources named here as a real, if informal, commitment: while listing them isn’t voluntary cost sharing, NSF’s own guidance states the Foundation “does expect that the resources identified… will be provided, or made available, should the proposal be funded.” Don’t list a resource you can’t actually deliver on.
Where a project depends on facilities, equipment, or commitments from a non-lead organization (a collaborator’s lab, a partner site, a core facility outside the submitting institution), PAPPG Chapter II directs that this be documented either in the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section itself or through a Letter of Collaboration — see CASRAI’s guide to NSF collaborative proposal mechanics for how those letters are handled separately from this section.
How This Section Differs From the Budget Justification
The two documents sit next to each other in most application packages and cover overlapping ground — both touch on what the project needs to run — but they answer different questions and NSF is explicit that they must not be merged:
- Purpose. The Facilities/Environment section answers “does the institutional environment support this work” (capacity, feasibility, Environment/adequacy-of-resources review). The Budget Justification answers “why does each requested budget line cost what it costs” (allowability, reasonableness, allocability under 2 CFR 200 cost principles).
- Financial content. At NSF this is a hard rule: Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources “must not include any quantifiable financial information” — no dollar amounts at all. NIH doesn’t state an equivalent explicit prohibition, but the attachment is conventionally written the same way in practice: narrative capability description, not a cost breakdown. Dollar figures — equipment purchase costs, per-diem rates, personnel salary justifications — belong in the Budget Justification, not here.
- What triggers new content. A new piece of equipment the project needs to purchase is a budget-justification item (its cost needs justifying); an existing piece of equipment or facility the project will use is a Facilities/Other Resources item (its availability needs establishing). The same physical resource can appear in both documents for different reasons — once as an existing asset supporting feasibility, once as a requested cost, if the project needs an upgrade or consumables for it.
- Review weight. Both are read by reviewers, but differently: the budget and its justification are reviewed primarily for allowability/reasonableness (often by grants management staff and program officers, not exclusively the scientific review panel), while Facilities & Other Resources feeds directly into the scientific panel’s Environment (NIH) or resource-adequacy (NSF) judgment.
See CASRAI’s Budget Justification Narrative: NIH vs. NSF guide for the budget-side half of this comparison in full.
Common Structural Conventions
Neither agency mandates a rigid template, but the conventions that have emerged across institutions (and, at NIH, in the agency’s own sample document) are consistent enough to treat as a reliable starting structure:
- Group by resource type, not by funding source. Typical headings: Laboratory, Clinical, Animal, Computer, Office/Administrative, and Other — include only the categories genuinely relevant to the proposed methods, and add subject-specific ones (e.g., Field Site, Biosafety, Manufacturing) where the project actually needs them.
- Tie each resource to a specific need in the proposal. A sentence connecting a listed resource to a specific aim, task, or method (e.g., which piece of infrastructure supports which part of the Research Strategy) does more work than an exhaustive inventory of everything the department owns.
- Cover personnel support, not just physical space. “Resources” includes institutional/administrative support, statistical or bioinformatics cores, and technical staff time available to the project — not only square footage and instrumentation.
- Address every performance site separately on multi-site or subcontract proposals. Reviewers expect to see the resource picture hold at each institution doing substantive work, not only the lead applicant.
- Keep it narrative and concise. Long lists of every instrument a core facility owns, unconnected to the proposed work, read as filler and dilute the sections that are actually load-bearing.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Including dollar amounts in the NSF version. This is a documented PAPPG violation, not a style preference — the section must contain no quantifiable financial information.
- Copy-pasting a generic institutional boilerplate. A Facilities section that reads identically across a PI’s last five proposals, regardless of methods, is the fastest way to trigger a feasibility question from a reviewer who notices the mismatch.
- Treating “no page limit” as “no editing.” Both agencies’ own sample materials run short; length isn’t the signal reviewers are looking for.
- Omitting a subcontractor or collaborating site’s resources entirely. If a meaningful part of the work happens somewhere other than the lead institution, that site’s capacity needs to be visible here (or, at NSF, in a Letter of Collaboration).
- Confusing “Equipment” (NIH’s separate attachment listing available major equipment) with the Facilities narrative. They’re submitted as distinct attachments in most NIH application packages — check the specific funding opportunity’s attachment list rather than assuming one covers the other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Facilities & Other Resources section scored the way Approach or Intellectual Merit is scored?
No — at neither agency is it an independently scored criterion. At NIH it informs the Environment criterion (one of five core criteria); at NSF it supports the resource-adequacy judgment within Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. It’s evaluated, but as supporting evidence, not a standalone score.
Is there a page limit?
NIH does not state a specific page limit for the Facilities & Other Resources attachment, per its application-guide page-limits table. NSF likewise doesn’t set a fixed page count for the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources document in PAPPG Chapter II. In practice, both agencies’ own sample materials run to a page or two — treat the absence of a stated limit as license to be complete, not as an invitation to pad.
Can I include cost or dollar figures in this section?
Not at NSF — PAPPG Chapter II explicitly requires the section to be narrative and prohibits quantifiable financial information. NIH doesn’t state an equivalent explicit ban, but the attachment is conventionally written without cost figures in practice; put dollar amounts in the Budget Justification instead.
What’s the difference between NIH’s “Facilities & Other Resources” and “Equipment” attachments?
They’re submitted as two separate attachments on most NIH application packages. Facilities & Other Resources describes the institutional environment (lab space, cores, clinical infrastructure, administrative support); Equipment lists major equipment already available to the project. Check the specific funding opportunity announcement’s attachment requirements, since exact naming can vary slightly by activity code.
Do I need a separate write-up for a subcontract or multi-site project?
Yes, in practice. Reviewers expect the resource picture to hold at every site doing substantive work, so each performance site — lead institution, subcontractor, consortium partner — conventionally gets its own subsection or, at NSF, may be documented via a Letter of Collaboration instead.
For the rest of the proposal narrative, see CASRAI’s guides to the NIH Specific Aims page, NSF Project Summary, and NSF Broader Impacts review criteria. For funder-specific infrastructure funding beyond a single proposal’s Facilities section, see Research Infrastructure Funding: Programs for Equipment, Facilities, and Instrumentation. For the NSF policy document referenced throughout, see the NSF PAPPG dictionary entry.
