Policy on Indirect Costs
Longview Philanthropy maintains a policy that limits indirect costs (‘overhead’) as follows:
For universities and community colleges: maximum 10% rate, i.e. indirect costs may not exceed 10% of total direct costs.
Longview Philanthropy defines indirect costs as expenses related to the general operations and administration of an organisation, which are not directly allocated to or identified with a specific project.
Example Calculation
To explain how our indirect costs policy works, here’s an example calculation.
Let’s say you want to request a £110 grant and your indirect costs are £10. This would fit exactly within our policy, since the direct costs (direct costs = total - indirect costs) are £100, and the indirect costs are 10/100=10%.
However, if the total grant amount was £100 including indirect costs of £10, then that would be too high, since the direct costs would be £90, and 10/90=~11%.