At the NIH SBIR Conference in Atlanta

Not quite live... here are notes from the first two sessions of the NIH Summer Conference in Atlanta. 


July 22

SBIR Atlanta Notes  Hot!  92 degrees. 

AirTran - filthy plane, one hour layover in Baltimore from Burlington to Atlanta, $69.00 upgrade to business class, comfortable seat.

MARTA - terrific underground transit system $13.00 for a four day pass. You wave the pass in front of a panel and it opens the door.

Omni Hotel @ CNN Center, great so far...if you enroll in their "select guest" program, you can get coffee and a paper delivered to the room in the morning at no extra charge...or add $2.95 for a croissant.

CDC is in the backyard....they are present today.
FDA is also here

One on Ones == 19 of 24 sessions leave a business card if nobody is there.
RAID - for drug discovery

Evening reception at 4:30 provided by Putnam Williams, outside the main ballroom in the registration area.

NIH staff available during lunch.

First session:
“This isn’t your grandmother’s SBIR/STTR Program Anymore.” JoAnne Goodnight
The program is in its 25th year. About 50% of the conference participants are new. Over 500 people are attending the conference; it does seem busy and big. 

SBIR/STTR Program Overview
NIH SBIR/STTR Program Specifics
Solicitations and Funding Opportunities
Gap funding

STTR is only .03% of extramural funding 

SBIR is 2.5% of extramural funding a

STTR is was set up ten years after SBIR. Designed for more academic co-operative R&D.

The programs are the largest seed capital source.... 2.3 billion dollars
NIH is one of the biggest of the the 14 or so agencies that participate.

Phase III can not use SBIR/STTR funding for final commercialization.

Failure is OK. Sometimes you won’t reach the marketplace.

These programs are unique in the government. High-risk, high-reward research.
SBA is the administrative umbrella.
Company organized as a for-profit
PI primary employment must be with the small business concern at time of award and for the duration of the project period
US owned 51%

STTR must include an intellectual property agreement worked out with the research institution

Difference between SBIR and STTR
STTR allows the PI to employed by the business or the research institution.
SBIR requires PI to be employed by the business.

Nuances of the NIH.

Not just drug development
Not just medical devices

SBIR/STTR are fully integrated with the NIH agenda
23 NIH centers support SBIR/STTR

Cancer
Heart Lung and Blood
Diabetes

Average award for Phase 1 are $170,000 and 12 months

Phase II competing renewal ---
Question does NIA participate in the Phase II competing renewal? Answer...yes it does. 

Timlines - 6-9 months (although my experience was close to 12).

Scientific Review
Council Review
Award Date

There are initiatives to reduce the review timeline (number of months between submission and an award) .

Number of applications are decreasing (!)
Why?
Trying to figure out why --

This is good news, current funding rates are:

24% Phase 1 funded (of grants submitted)
42% Phase II funded
19% Fast-Track funded

There are more and more university startups.
1/2 attendees  today are  affiliated with a research institution

The differences between university and business

Advice: 

* Communicate with the program director
* Understand the institute mission and needs
* Read solicitation and follow instructions
* Don’t go it alone -- find partners 
* Don’t depend solely on SBIR STTR funding
* Have an outcome
* Be persistent


Second Talk Dr. Suzanne Fisher Director of Receipt and Referral CSR/NIH
About how the Center for Scientific Review Works

One issue was a question as to whether they will keep the three due dates.
or have some kind of rolling, ongoing application process

IC = Institute or Center
SRO = Scientific Review Officer

Changes in the past 1.5 year or so

* Two day error correction windows (shortened from five days)
* Multiple Principal Investigator option. (contact PI must meet the SBIR requirements)
* No paper letters like the summary statement are sent anymore.  Everything appears on the NIH commons web site. 

Anyone not registered with the Commons must get registered.

Late applications:
We don’t give permission in advance

Format: requirements must be met. Use headers and bold, etc.

Contact the scientific review officer, to make changes.

One attachment should be a cover letter. There is a suggested format

Don’t submit derivative applications (multiple diseases)
You can resubmit twice. You have to receive the summary statement before resubmitting.

Only 1 Phase II from a single Phase I is allowed.

Electronic Submission is done between Grants.Gov and the NIH Commons

Do the research plan as one document and the cut it up so that you can stay within the page limits

If you do not see your NIH image on the Commons...NIH doesn’t see it either. (so follow up after submitting and make sure it is there).

There are referral guidelines for institutes and centers. You are not owned by a single institute....try to diversfy.

The secret two-letter decoder ring for NIH agencies as part of your grant #.


Peer Review Group
Scientific Review Group
Advisory Council

SRG does the score....
Councll is institute

Funding decision made by Institution/Center

Small business representatives are on review committees

Trying out videoconferencing, and wikis

Most peer reviewers have a Doctoral degree

First thing they do is “unscoring”... find the 40% that are to be rejected, however any reviewer can say they want to perform a review.

Significance
Approach
Innovation
Investigator
Environment

Priority Score - 100-350
100 is the best possible score, 350 is the worst.

All institutes have put a lot of work into their web sites and FAQs.

Tripit or Not

Stupid Internet Service #1020202

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Take the multiple eMails confirmations you receive after planning a trip, and then get a nicely formatted, consolidated itinerary from TripIt. Just don't expect any intelligence. By the time you've massaged everything to work...you could have printed out ten itineraries that you formatted yourself. I especially like the third line from the bottom, "unable to understand 'Hotel Reservations' ".

Fast File Copying with TeraCopy

Seen in Web Worker Daily... Teracopy, a windows copy program that replaces the Windows Explorer copy function, with both high speed and a synchronization capability.

Grantsmanship Seminar in Manchester NH

The Grantsmanship Center's signature Grantsmanship Training Program is coming to Manchester, New Hampshire, July 28-August 1, 2008.

The program will be hosted by Saint Anselm College.

The Grantsmanship Training Program is a comprehensive, hands-on workshop that covers the complete grant development process, from researching funding sources to writing and reviewing grant proposals. More than 110,000 nonprofit and government personnel have attended this fast-paced, five-day workshop, which is followed with a full year of membership support services.

What will you learn:

During the workshop, participants learn The Grantsmanship Center's proposal-writing format, the most widely used in the world. In addition to practicing advanced techniques for pursuing government, foundation, and corporate grants, participants work in small teams to develop and then review real grant proposals.

Participants exit the class equipped with new skills, new professional connections, and follow-up services for one year, including professional proposal review, access to The Grantsmanship Center's exclusive online funding databases, and an array of other benefits. Many also leave with proposals that are ready to polish and submit.

Tuition for the Grantsmanship Training Program is $895 ($845 for each additional registrant from the same organization).

To ensure personalized attention, class size is limited to 30 participants. For more information or to learn about scholarship opportunities for qualifying organizations, click here.

To register online, click here. Or call The Grantsmanship Center's Registrar at (800) 421-9512

Nationwide Training Schedule

Register Now!

More About Us

Our Podcasts

Don't forget to check out our nationwide training schedule for other workshops we'll be conducting throughout the U.S. in coming months.

Best wishes,


All of us at The Grantsmanship Center

Municipal Broadband: How it works, how it is financed

I recently wrote an op-ed about broadband in Vermont (not). Several folks wrote back asking why I hadn't mentioned two major municipal fiber-to-the-home projects, one up and running, Burlington Telecom, and one in the planning and funding stages, ECFiber.

The short answer was that I didn't feel I had enough space to talk about these, the longer answer is that the projects are controversial and have become politicized with one side saying the fiber projects receive an unfair taxpayer subsidy. (They don't.) and the other side saying that the incumbent commercial offerings from Comcast and Verizon/Fairpoint, are receiving overt subsidies as a sort of bribe to encourage them to build out their networks in rural areas. (they might be). Both the fiber systems, and the incumbent systems have been savaged in the press. I didn't really want to go there; I was more interested in the notion of broadband as the equivalent of the interstate highway system.

Anyway, I wanted to point to what appears to be an excellent series of white papers discussing the technical, political, and financial aspects of municipal broadband by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

http://www.newrules.org/info/index.html

I do have a dog in this fight... as a research business start-up, I'm currently buying 14 internet connections using DSL, cable and one lone connection to BT. These are used to deliver our multi-point video exercise program to patients in their homes via their own TV sets and their internet connection. I've dealt with pretty much every horror story you can think of in ordering these connections. Think "airline travel", and you've pretty much got the paradigm. The newspaper piece was really an attempt to (re)start the conversation among the people in our state about a vital piece of our economic future and to educate myself about the alternatives and realities.

Cars & Jobs in America

With $4.00 a gallon gasoline, people are starting to think about the high cost of driving. Yet, in this report and video from the Annie E. Casey foundation, you can see how access to car makes an enormous difference in the lives of low-income workers. From the introduction:

Low-income workers who are trying to reach self-sufficiency, stabilize their finances and move up the economic ladder must be able to connect to good jobs and meet family obligations. A car is often a necessity. However, common obstacles such as overpriced and unreliable cars, sub prime (high interest rate) loans, high down payments, hidden purchase costs, and the limitations caused by poor credit histories can prevent them from improving their lives through car ownership.

Newbie Guide to Asterisk Pitfalls

The good folks over at Nerd Vittles continue to hack away at Asterisk, and publish a terrific blog. Their May 12th posting is great. Asterisk Hell: A Minefield Navigation Guide for Newbies.

VoIP Supply offers SIP trunking

I was intrigued to see that VoIP Supply, the folks that sold me my Trixbox and my Polycom SIP phones are now offering SIP trunking and data services.

Don't know how this stacks up against suppliers like VoicePulse. For one thing the pricing model is slightly different, with VoIP Supply looking for a minimum $25.00 per month, but with unlimited local and long-distance calling in the lower 48 states. VoicePulse, at least the version for Asterisk/Trixbox, was on a pre-paid model but charges 2 cents or so per minute.

What about the quality of these calls though? Maybe I'm just cranky, but I've had literally dozens of calls from vendors in the past year that clearly were low-quality VoIP calls. I would be appalled if my own calls to my clients and prospects sounded like many of these calls.

In one case, I was (supposedly) working with a sophisticated and highly-paid consultant who was using either Vonage or the Comcast VoIP. The guy couldn't get out of his own way...I just couldn't understand him, over multiple calls. How are we supposed to conduct business this way? And, where is the savings per month, at $25.00 or $125 or even $1025 per month that the person is supposedly saving, when as a result a client drops this person, after originally looking forward to a multi-thousand dollar contract? False economy.

Bottom Line: The landline isn't dead yet. Use VoiP for long-distance calls to friends and family, and non-critical overseas calls. If there is any question, during a VoIP call, have a back-up landline available.

And if you have contracted out any functions to a call center (perish the thought...my local newspaper has done this to verify authorship of letters to the editor), be sure you get yourself on the receiving end of such calls to assess the quality. Nothing turns off customers and prospects more quickly then struggling with foreign-based tech support, heavily accented, with stupid calling scripts, and bad sound quality.

Use Excel Goal Seek in Indirect Calculations

The Excel "goal seek" function allows you to to work backwards from a total. I needed to do this when I was calculating direct and indirect costs from a total, without the underlying spreadsheet. The question I wanted to answer was this: "Given a total consortium cost of $72,000, and a known indirect rate of 52%, what is the direct cost?".

Goal Seek only deals with a single variable.

The formula for my calculation would be something like:
X + (X*.52) = 72,000

This looks like three cells in the Excel Spreadsheet

Amount	Rate	Total
47368	0.52	72000

Assuming these are cells M4, N4 ,and O4, on the spreadsheet enter the following

O4 = M4+(M4*N4)

N4 = .52

When you run the goal seeker, it asks for the "goal" value and the goal cell, (which is required to have the formula) It also asks for an "entry" cell, the cell that gets changed as you spin up toward the goal.



So, this shows, that given a total cost of $72,000, the direct costs allowable using a 52% indirect rate would be $47368.

Indirect: Figuring a Base Rate

Ok....I'm going to explain this to myself. Below is an note taken from the NIH example Excel spreadsheet for calculating indirect costs.

1. Rate Base Determination: The base is used to allocate Indirect (Overhead/G&A) costs equitably to ALL PROJECTS (Direct, IR&D and Commercial). The base can be direct salaries and wages, direct salaries and wages plus fringe benefits, total direct costs (no exclusions), or modified total direct costs (e.g., total direct costs excluding equipment, total direct costs excluding equipment and subcontract costs in excess of $25,000 per subcontract per project period [as used in this example], etc.). The base an organization chooses to allocate Indirect (Overhead/G&A) costs should result in an EQUITABLE ALLOCATION OF INDIRECT COSTS TO ALL PROJECTS.

For example; if the organization has a mixture of commercial and NIH awards and the commercial is heavy in materials while the NIH awards are heavy in direct salaries and wages, the base should be total direct costs and not just direct salaries and wages. However, if an organization only had NIH awards which are all heavy in direct salaries and wages than the base could be direct salaries and wages.

2. IR&D: It is NIH's/DHHS's policy to exclude IR&D costs from the Indrect cost pool and include it in the Indirect cost base, thus, these values include element costs relating to both "Direct" and IR&D activities.

Taking Item 1 first, I've extracted the following points:

• There are four methods for allocating the base. These include:
  1. Direct Salaries and Wages
  2. Direct Salaries and Wages + Fringe Benefits
  3. Total Direct Costs with no exclusions
  4. Modified Total Direct Costs
  
  
• Modified total Direct Costs are calculated by taking the total direct costs excluding equipment, and amount of subcontracts over $25,000). MTDC comes up in F.A.R. (the Federal Aquisition Regulations, and regularly shows up in DOD calculations. The FAR subpart 42.7 discusses indirect rates but, as always, it references the canon, which includes the OMB budget documents A-21 for educational institutions, A-87 for state and local governments and Indian reservations, and A-122 for non-profits.
• So, as near as I can figure out, you choose which of the four allocation methods by figuring out if you are "heavy" in people, or in materials.

What about the common situation of a start-up organization that has a single funded project? Jim and Gail Greenwood address this question.

We sometimes hear from start-up firms that they don’t have any indirect costs since they will only have this one SBIR project and therefore all of their costs would be direct ones. This likely is not true. Even a one-project company is probably going to be preparing other proposals, keeping time sheets (as required by the SBIR agencies), filing tax reports, doing some schmoozing to improve their chances of a Phase II award, etc—all of these costs suggest that this firm has indirect costs and needs to calculate an indirect rate to bill for them.

Journal for Grass Roots Fundraising

Who says that direct mail doesn't work anymore? Today I received a flyer from Grassroots Fundraising Journal. $35.00 for six issues. Topics taken from the flyer:

• Step-by-Step Guide to Organizing a Fundraising Dinner
  
• How to Raise $50,000 in six Weeks
  
• 53 Ways for Board Members to Raise $1000 (I'm hoping that is each, not the full board)
  
• Creating a Budget for Fundriasing
  
• Contracts with Board Members: a Working Model
  

But there is nothing in the list about social networking, or internet fundraising. Their web site has a considerable amount of basic information. A search for 'internet' on the site reveals a number of articles available behind their pay wall.

Ubuntu Linux rescues Windows XP Embedded

This being summer, we're back on the Windows XP Embedded kick. After generating an image, the question was..how do we get this on to our target machine?

We wasted a lot of time on this one. As recommended in the docs, we installed "regular" Windows XP on the target machine to make sure that it would run Embedded. No problem there, it installed without problems from CD. We ran the Target Analyzer, to get our device.pmq. Copied device.pmq back to the development machine and generated the image.

At this point, we started fiddling with a second partition on the target machine. We created and formatted this using Acronis Disk Doctor, which comes on a bootable CD. Our plan was to install our target image on this partition, change the ARC listing in boot.ini to point to the second partition as the boot partition. We spent a day fooling with this, including changing the drive letters, hiding the partition, moving stuff around. Didn't work.

Finally, we reformatted the hard drive on the target machine. Now you'd think that Microsoft would have something like a "LiveCD" for this purpose, which would boot a version of Windows enough to allow copying to an existing hard drive. It doesn't, but Ubuntu, Suse, and Fedora Linux all have this, and Ubuntu had drivers that would read the USB drive where we stored the image, as well as the NTFS formatted hard drive.

A quick drag and drop, and we're done!

Have they no shame? (Microsoft that is...) There is a Community Technology Preview out for a new version of Embedded...let's hope this issue might be addressed with a couple of extra tools.

Introduction June 1, 2008

Welcome to Tech for Non-Profits, the unplugged version of Microdesign Consulting. Part lab-notebook, part brain-extension, it is a repository for new and evolving ideas and projects that we stumble across as we move our former database development and network support company into startup mode for a technology-based home health-care delivery service provider. Being grant-funded ourselves, we're very much looking over the the grant landscape.

We are located in the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies which is itself a nonprofit. Our major extracurricular activity is the Vermont Software Developer's Alliance, a non-profit trade group which promotes economic development in our area, primarily for software development companies.

Nine Questions for Evaluating a Business Plan

Lea Boyea of Freshtracks Capital gave a presentation the other day at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies about the many questions that are asked of a start-up company before they receive venture capital funding. I thought this was particularly well presented. Although Lea claims that the nine questions are not original, I searched in vain using Google to find another mention of them, so until I hear otherwise, I'll credit them to Lea and Freshtracks.

These same nine criteria could be modified to fit non-profits who are looking for grant funding. If you want people to give you money, you have to be in a position to explain why they should consider it.


Here are my notes from the session handouts.

Management Team
Completeness of team
Domain Expertise
Growth Company/early-stat expertise
Previous successful exits
Previously raised investment capital?
Interest and wilingness to bring in active investors

Market Opportunity
Size of Market
Growth of Market
Fragmentation of Market
Is the market likely to have one, a few, or many winners?

Value Proposition/Consumer Pain
What Is the problem being solved
How painful is the current process for your customers
How willing/anxious will they be to switch from their current solution?

Technology (Product/Service)
What is the unique technology that you are providing with your product or service?
10 x less expensive or 10x more effective than competition?
How revolutionary/evolutionary is it?
How proprietary is i?
Can it be protected via trademark, patents, business secrets?

Business Model & Go-To-Market Strategy
Make it once, sell many times
No real estate, restaurants, or retail
Distribution strategy
Sales process and Sales cycle
Scalability
Pricing/ Recurring revenue? Margins?
Financial Projections
5 year Profit & Loss Revenue, Direct costs, Gross Margins, SG&A, Net Profit
Balance Sheet which inofrs cash collection cycles and working capital requirements

Competition
Who are your competitors?
How are they solving this problem differently?
What are their unique attributes?
How well capitalized are they?
What kinds of competitive hurdles will you bump into in the sales process?

Valuation and Capital Needs
Pre-money valuation? Percentage of company ownership?
Capital needed in this round of financing?
Capital needed in future rounds of financing?
Common Stock sufficiency/equity incentives

Deal Dynamics
Terms and Conditions
Timing
Co-Investors
Deal Structure
Governance- Board Composition

Exit
What is the likely exit sale to financial or strategic buyer, IPO, recapitalization?
If acquisition, who are the likely acquirers?
What time horizon
Expected multiples?
Return on investment?

Embedded XP Seminar Notes

I attended the one day Microsoft seminar on Windows XP, hosted by Sean Liming. A bit of confusion at the start, according to Sean, The Big M had extra marketing money in the budget toward the end of the fiscal year, and hired him to do several of these one-day sessions. His company charged $99.00 per session, so apparently of the 22 or so people who had signed up, all but three or four of us dropped out after realizing they were supposed to actually pay something. Too bad. It isn't often that you get to have a session with a top authority and consultant for that price. He has written several books, and also publishes software tools to help enable the process of building XPe images.

I covered Windows Embedded XP last year about this time and mostly the platform hasn't changed. Several new points of interest emerged:

1. Windows Embedded is a teeny-tiny portion of the overall business at Microsoft. Changes and updates are infrequent, and the crudeness of the tools reflects this...they don't put a lot of resources into Embedded.

2. Working with XPe is not particularly fast or facile. The problem does not lie with the programmer, it is just the nature of the software. (but, have you ever recompiled a Linux kernal?)

3. Vista embedded which was announced vaguely many months ago, is currently way off into the future, not least because the footprint will be larger.

4. The marketing people are making a name change, which seems really stupid. If I've got this right, XPe becomes Embedded Standard Edition, and Windows CE becomes Windows Mobile. Or something like that. Stupid.

5. Windows CE, is designed for hand-helds and cell phones and is really a different animal from Windows Embedded. People who have attempted to use CE when they should use Embedded, because of the lower licensing cost have been disappointed. The incentive is there, however, as the runtime for an instance of Windows Embedded is $90.00, where with CE it is $3.00.

6. XPe is really a componetized version of Windows...you can pick and choose which pieces of Windows that you really want.

7. If you include the Windows installer component, then you can perform a install of application software after generating the XPe image. This was a revelation to me....I thought you had to have everything componitized from the get-go. This knowledge was worth the price of the seminar to me, and it has caused me to take another look at attempting to generate a base OS for installing our applications.

Allowable Non-Profits

Interesting discussion at marginalrevolution which cites an article in the Times.

In a ruling last December that sent tremors through the not-for-profit world, the Minnesota Supreme Court said a small nonprofit day care agency here had to pay property taxes because, in essence, it gave nothing away.

The agency, the Under the Rainbow Child Care Center, charges the same price per child regardless of whether their parents are able to pay the full amount themselves or they receive government support to cover the cost.

Tom Friedman: Dept. of Missed Opportunity

I've basically gone off Thomas Friedman, but his May 4th column has a great summary of the missed opportunities of the past several years. We seem to have repeated many of the mistakes of the seventies and eighties, in many cases with some of the very same leaders who screwed up the first time around. But the final paragraph deserves a comment...

...because millions of Americans are dying to be enlisted — enlisted to fix education, enlisted to research renewable energy, enlisted to repair our infrastructure, enlisted to help others. Look at the kids lining up to join Teach for America. They want our country to matter again. They want it to be about building wealth and dignity — big profits and big purposes. When we just do one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, said Shriver, “no one can touch us.”

How about we enlist ourselves? Many have come to the realization that leadership on the national level is an oxymoron. Our national institutions have been co-opted by lobbyists, and corrupted by the Bush administration. In areas of demonstrated need there has been no engagement. (New Orleans). Corrupt? How else can you characterize an administration that puts polluters in charge at the EPA, or who guts reports from its own NASA about the issue of climate change? The next president (if they choose to accept it) will have the slow task of trying to rebuild trust in our government among our citizens and throughout the world. It won't be a thankless task, perhaps, but it will be a slow one.

Fortunately, the states aren't waiting, in areas like health care and energy policy. Individuals shouldn't wait as well. Let's just hope that the next administration, whether Democratic or Republican will just stay out of the way.  As usual, it will be individuals, non-profits and NGOs who will show the way forward. 

Cloud Storage: You already have it...

What is all the fuss about Cloud Storage? This is the notion that you can store all (or some) of your files in the internet "cloud"...i.e. online using some kind of paid service from Amazon (S3) or any number of web services. Aside from the fact that this could be considered a security nightmare if left unmanaged to network users... "er, sorry, I stored the 3Q budget figures in the cloud, and now I can't remember the password"... there are existing alternatives that you already have available and for which you may already have paid:

1. If you use Google Docs, your documents are stored in the cloud
2. If you use BaseCamp, your documents are stored in the cloud
3. If you have a web site, you have the ability to use FTP to transmit your files and store them in a presumably permanent and secure place.
4. How about a thumb drive? Your personal cloud.

So the idea of paying $4.95 a month extra to store files seems ridiculous.

Indirect Expenses: Jargon

Total Direct Costs 

Exactly what it sounds like.  The total expenditures directly related to project.

Modified Total Direct Costs (MTDC) These are the Total Direct Costs minus certain exemptions. (a lot of exemptions, really.) For example:

• Equipment purchases
• Capital Expenditures
• Rental Costs: Offices, Laboratories
• Scholarships and Fellowships

Note that just because the above items are excluded doesn't mean that the grant doesn't pay for these...that is the whole purpose of accounting for indirect. 

Facilities and Administration Costs (F&A)  Just another name for indirect costs. 

Bids and Proposals (B&P) These are costs related to the preparation of bids and proposals. This is not to be underestimated; I've related elsewhere how the preparation of grant proposals can run into considerable time. 

Independent Research and Development (IRAD) This refers to additional R&D that is being pursued outside of the scope of a funded project. This relates especially to National Science Foundation projects.  IRAD is unallowable...that is, NSF will not fund IRAD as either a direct or an indirect cost. Same with NIH. However, other government agencies will allow IRAD as an indirect cost. According to Russ Farmer, high-tech companies will typically allocate 10-15% of their revenue to IRAD. 

Unallowable  Unallowable is an expenditure which is cannot be funded either directly or indirectly by a award. There is a famous list; my favorite is alcoholic beverages.  

Indirect Expenses: Calculations for Federal Grants

After reading the article from The Grantsmanship Center about calculating indirect rates, I started to drill down a bit further. This is a dense subject. I'm already on my third cup of coffee, and that is probably due to the fact that I don't have access to anything stronger to ease the pain. However, one way to learn something is to look for patterns and repetition. If you read something three times, and see it referenced by other documents, it starts to fit into some kind of ordered symmetry. So, here are some resources:

The Office of Management and Budget Circular A-122 appears to be the ur-text for all things indirect. The title of this missive is Cost Principals for Non-Profit Organizations and the summary is:

1. Purpose. This Circular establishes principles for determining costs of grants, contracts and other agreements with non-profit organizations. It does not apply to colleges and universities which are covered by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-21, "Cost Principles for Educational Institutions"; State, local, and federally-recognized Indian tribal governments which are covered by OMB Circular A-87, "Cost Principles for State, Local, and Indian Tribal Governments"; or hospitals. The principles are designed to provide that the Federal Government bear its fair share of costs except where restricted or prohibited by law. The principles do not attempt to prescribe the extent of cost sharing or matching on grants, contracts, or other agreements. However, such cost sharing or matching shall not be accomplished through arbitrary limitations on individual cost elements by Federal agencies. Provision for profit or other increment above cost is outside the scope of this Circular.

So, assuming you aren't a government, college or university, or hospital, it appears A-122 is for you if you are a 501c(3) non-profit. Here is a link to a PDF version of the document (accuracy and provenance unknown). For for-profit companies, such as SBIR companies the relevant discussion is in the Federal Aquisition Regulations, FAR Part 31 Contract Cost Principles and Procedures. Indirect is discussed in subpart .203 but only very generally.

Here is a Powerpoint presentation as a PDF that was from a training provided by HUD (Housing and Urban Development).

Here's a one-page explanation on calculating indirect rates with an example. This is from the Compassion Capital Fund, which appears to be an offshoot of a government initiative to support faith-based and community organizations. Lots of resources and links here.

Jim and Gail Greenwood have a brief discussion of indirect as related to SBIR proposals. This is one of a whole host of useful articles relating to their business in supporting and counseling aspiring SBIR grantees. As an aside, I recommend SBIR grantees attend any of Jim or Gail's frequent workshops. Be sure to read their material. They are a rare combination of highly knowledgeable consultants who can turn government mush such as FAR 32 Part 3.201 into reasonably understandable English. They will also review your grant proposals. I had them review my Phase II. They are also funny and eminently approachable speakers.

National Institutes of Health - Ruth Bishop's PowerPoint presentation

Health and Human Services - Example cost proposal by a non-profit. This appears to be quite useful. (or maybe I'm starting to get it?)

Mac Conversion: A progress report and some backsliding

The Spousal Unit always wonders why I upgrade my computer and operating system as frequently as I do. The fact is I think the world has enjoyed a pretty long run with Windows XP, wasn't it out in 2001? She doesn't sympathize with my explanation that sometimes I just get to the point that I'm tired of solving old problems, and I would just as soon solve new ones.

I bought a Macbook back in November. I was just coming off a bad experience with Microsoft Windows Vista. Partly I needed a new laptop...my Dell Inspiron keyboard was terrible, even after two replacements. So even thought the Inspiron is as great laptop, it was essentially useless for actual work, like word-processing. It was also heavy, but considering it could be a replacement for a desktop machine, I was willing to live with the weight.

So, an update on the Macbook, and my (non)-conversion to all things Mac.
The hardware is terrific. Even thought Apple upgraded the processor speed and hard drive capacity shortly after I bought mine, both have been more than adequate. What is really nice is that the weight is about half of the Inspiron. I can keep this machine in a LL Bean Sportsman Briefcase, along with the essential accessories and a leather-bound pad for note-taking. It has an excellent and usable keyboard. It has a track pad which mimics a single-button mouse. This is still a pain for us two-button mouse users, but it something you can live with if you want to go naked, or you can buy a Microsoft two-button notebook mouse to carry in the briefcase.

The Macbook plays nicely with external non-Apple peripherals. When you aren't traveling, you can plug it into one of those Dell 19" monitors from Staplesand work at 1440x900 resolution. If put the notebook to sleep, and then attach the external mouse, keyboard and monitor, you can restart it with the lid closed. Not as convenient as a docking station, which might be something to try next.

I've got the Macbook printing to an HP OfficeJet Pro K5400 ink-jet printer. Two of these printers have been working reliably and well for the past eighteen months under what I would call light duty. The printer has a USB interface. If you need to plug this in with a USB keyboard and USB mouse, then you need an external USB hub. I note that the docking station advertises five USB connections, which is another reason to consider it. Right now I'm using $14.95 keyboard from Logitech as the external keyboard. It is a little scary to realize that this dirt-cheap keyboard is superior to that of the Dell laptop keyboard.

Having all this paraphernalia connected to the Macbook detracts considerably from its sleek and smooth look. The Macbook is considerably more attractive running alone on a battery, connected wireless to the unseen network cloud. I've gotten well over three hours on the battery when running wirelessly which is fine. With the wireless connection enabled, the machine will sniff out the strongest local network connection and walk you through the connection process. If you have done this once already, the connection will be automatic the next time. It works fine on the university's VPN with the addition of the Cisco VPN client which requires manually logging on.

Mac heads rave about the Mac software and operating system. I think the OS is fine. I don't care really for the "Finder", but that is partly because I haven't really transitioned comfortably from the Windows "Explorer". But I really like that fact that the OS on the Macbook is the same as the OS on all other Macs, and that it is available in one version only. It is an operating system instead of a demanding lifestyle. Apple doesn't try to bludgeon its competition or its customers with its operating system. Really, can you imagine the Apple OS getting the same kind of treatment and publicity that Vista has gotten in the past two years? Upgrades and patches are a fraction of what comes out for Windows every week.

As for the backsliding, well, I installed Vista using the Parallels software. I did this strictly so that I could run OneNote, the one essential Microsoft program that doesn't seem to have a Mac equivalent. Except for the onerous secondary startup process of booting Vista within Parallels and then starting OneNote, this seems to work fine. In fact, the Macbook would really make an ideal Windows laptop.

Other Mac Software

Safari is much maligned in the blogosphere, and it has crashed several times. I installed Firefox as an antidote, but it crashed even more, so I'm sticking with Safari on the Mac side of the house at the moment. IMail doesn't really compete with Outlook, and I've had trouble trying to duplicate the series of folders that I have in Outlook with rules that automatically move new messages into specific folders. The calendar and address book have separate interfaces, and I guess I prefer how Outlook integrates all these into a single (albeit bloated) application.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I'm really attached to this notebook. It is a fine combination of price and functionality with a sleek and comfortable design. I'm not sure if I would recommend it for an office, but for an individual's private machine it is ideal. With the addition of some inexpensive peripherals, it doubles nicely as a desktop machine as well.

Five-Day Grantsmanship Center in New Hampshire

The Grantsmanship Center is bringing their five-day training program to New Hampshire July 28th through August 1, 2008.

The center's web site has a series of thirty free papers with hints and discussion of the grant-writing process. I just found a terrific eight-page explanation which describes how to calculate indirect costs.

Selections from Verizon's DSL Service Agreement

In the spirit of Jerry Pournelle, "we read these things so you don't have to", I find among 6 (six!) pages of fine print sent to every poor schlub who subscribes to Verizon's DSL service, the following points of interest:

Section 4.3
Restrictions on Use. The Service is a consumer grade service and is not designed for or intended to be used for any commercial purpose. You may not resell the Service, use it for high volume purposes, or engage in similar activities that constitute such use (commercial or non-commercial). If you subscribe to a Broadband Service, you may connect multiple computers/devices within a single home to your modem and/or router to access the Service, but only through a single Verizon-issued IP address. You also may not exceed the bandwidth usage limitations that Verizon may establish from time to time for the Service, or use the Service to host any type of server. Violation of this section may result in bandwidth restrictions on your Service or suspension or termination of your Service.

Section 10.4
Monitoring of Network Performance by Verizon. Verizon automatically measures and monitors network performance and the performance of your Internet connection and our network. We also will access and record information about your computer and Equipment's profile and settings and the installation of software we provide. You agree to permit us to access your computer and Equipment and to monitor, adjust and record such data, profiles and settings for the purpose of providing the Service...

Fairpoint/Verizon: Change Number of Rings before VoiceMail

This took an hour to figure out...and three lengthy calls, two of which were cut off.

This applies if you have the newly switched-over Fairpoint residential service, which, as of April 1 was taken over from Verizon. (Maine/NH/VT) Rather than going through the multi-level call director a (800) 870-9999, they'll forward you to what they say is the business office at 1 (866) 984-2001. It is this latter number where you can ask them to change the number of rings before your residential line goes into voice mail.

Why can't this be a "personal option" directly within the phonemail system is a mystery.

Seems silly to post this in a blog, but there was nothing online about this, that I could fine in the Verizon or FairPoint web sites.

The automated call directors represent a whole new level of obnoxiousness. It is as if they are trying to drive their customers insane.

Chron this week and NPQ

The Non-Profit Quarterly has been out for several weeks. Although most on-line articles are for subscribers only, they publish a summary sheet of the issue's articles.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy's May 1 issue has been published. Haven't gotten very far, but there was an interesting review of Oprah Winfrey's Big Give program, which sounds like a version of Survivor:Philanthropist. Hey, whatever works, right?