Administrative Fee

The Research Foundation of The City University of New York (RFCUNY) is a nonprofit educational corporation founded in 1963 to provide post-award fiscal and administrative support for CUNY’s research and sponsored programs. RFCUNY’s services allow CUNY researchers, faculty, and staff to focus on their intellectual curiosity and scientific discoveries, on projects and programs that serve our local and global communities, proposing concrete solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.

RFCUNY has a unique status as a legally separate entity from The City University of New York (CUNY) that serves as the system’s fiscal agent in support of the CUNY mission. RFCUNY provides support in identifying and obtaining external resources from government and private sponsors and it takes on the administrative burden of fiscally managing externally funded research, projects, and/or sponsored programs.

RFCUNY does not receive financial support from the City of New York or the State of New York to fund its activities. RFCUNY relies primarily on the income it receives from the administrative fee that it charges for the various project administration services that it provides to CUNY campuses, school, and units.

The administrative fee is applied to expenses based on established rates by category and the specific services provided to the CUNY unit. This fee reflects the varying levels of support offered by RFCUNY across different expense categories and supports the operational costs associated with delivering essential services. These services include – but are not limited to – the following: pre-award support; human resources and payroll services; contract and sub-contract review and management; project-related legal services; project-based data management and information services; procurement and accounts payable; financial management and report preparation; grant audit support; and other grant and sponsored project management services.

RFCUNY’s administrative fee does not reduce the amount of funding available to the Principal Investigators (PIs) to cover the direct costs of the project.

CUNY units pay the administrative fee from their available funds including those under management at RFCUNY.

Funders and sponsors know that managing research grants and sponsored programs incurs costs and they allow for and provide for facilities and administrative costs in addition to direct costs on most of their funded activities. These costs are often negotiated by the grant seeker or PI with the funder or specified in the grant application or Request for Proposals (RFP) and included as a line item in the approved project budget for each sponsored award.

If a funder does not cover administrative costs, grant-seeking faculty and staff must work with their college grants office and the leadership of their college, campus or unit, to determine how the unit will pay the RFCUNY administrative fee for the management and administration of their project.