Successful outcomes of research are often dependent on access to facilities that provide a particular type of research material, data acquisition, data analysis, consultation, and/or other service. Often the use of these facilities is shared across departments and disciplines so that no single research project can be expected to provide direct cost support for operation of the facility. For the purposes of these guidelines, facilities that demonstrate this sort of shared use are defined as core research facilities (or core facilities for short). Core facilities fall under the cost principles established for "Service Centers" in OMB CASB Circular A-21.

UGA has many kinds of core facilities, operated under many different management structures. Smaller facilities that serve only a few research groups may be supported by department budgets or by some combination of contributions from users, or both. Campus-wide facilities that have expensive instrumentation operate with a full-fledged management plan and a business plan that includes cost recovery to handle some share of operational expenses. Given the definition above for core facilities, an argument can be made that some share of facilities & administrative (F&A or "indirect") reimbursements should be expected to contribute to operational support of core facilities. In fact, although it is not often made explicit, the current institutional support of these core facilities, whether it comes from department, school, college, or other budgets, essentially constitutes this F&A reimbursement.

In specific cases, the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) provides core facility support that should be considered F&A reimbursement (often through UGARF). Although OVPR would prefer to be able to provide as much support as needed to all core facilities, limited resources require OVPR to consider carefully the return on investment of this support, measured by the impact that can be made on research progress (which often results in increased research support).

This document describes the planning that must be done by a core facility to allow OVPR to evaluate the potential return on any investment.

Before OVPR will consider supporting an existing or new core facility, the following documents must be supplied:

• Strategic plan
• Management plan
• Business plan, and
• A report on past performance (for existing facilities).

Any resulting OVPR support will then come with agreement from the core facility management to provide annual reports of core facility performance, measured against these plans. OVPR is prepared to offer help in preparing these planning documents. Of course, even for core facilities that do not request OVPR support, these planning documents represent a set of "best practices" that should help ensure the viability of the core facility.

[1-2 pages]

The strategic plan describes why the products/services provided by the core facility are necessary for research progress. This would answer questions like:

• What are the products or services to be provided by the core facility?
• What types of research will take advantage of products/services offered (give one or two examples of how research projects will utilize the core facility products/services)?
• What is the demand for products/services?
• How do researchers obtain these products/services now (if they do); i.e., what is the competition and how does this facility produce value added over the competition?
• Why do we need a core facility rather than allowing individual laboratories to provide their own products/services?
• Major (potential) users should be identified and should provide statements of the need for the core facility. Some of these users will be interviewed.

[1-2 pages including organizational chart]

Provide an organizational chart and job descriptions of all personnel associated with the facility.

• At the top of this organizational chart must be the administrative unit responsible for the core facility. Define what the lines on the organizational chart mean (in other words, what are the relationships between positions on the chart in terms of authority, responsibility, accountability?).
• Which positions will be state-supported and which income-supported (details to be provided in the business plan)?
• How will "user faculty" help operationally (i.e., provide detail of faculty advisory structure, function, and membership; note that the faculty advisory group should report to the administrative unit)?
• For a new facility, where is space available, who controls it, and is there an agreement in place for assigning it to this core facility?
• For an existing facility, describe the space occupied, who controls it, and what agreements are in place for continuing occupancy.
• Provide a floor plan describing the use of the space.
• Describe your plans for marketing the products/services provided by the core facility, both on and off campus. Who will design/maintain the core facility web site?

[1-2 pages including spreadsheet of costs/income]

Note that UGA has a Service Center Policy.

All core facilities are required to comply with this policy, and the business plan should state how the core facility is in compliance. Most importantly, no UGA core facility can make a profit or loss, nor can they be construed as being in unfair competition with legitimate business concerns. On the other hand, viable core facilities are expected to demonstrate their value to the research community. This is evidenced by the willingness of researchers to pay for products/services, with this income offsetting expenses, according to the business plan.

The business plan will be evaluated on how well it answers questions such as:

• How will researchers express the value they place on having these products/services available?
• What costs will be recovered and how?
• What fiscal resources are expected from users (both UGA and non-UGA), departments, colleges, OVPR, other sources?

The business plan should attempt to project the future demand and the resulting cost recovery. Given this expected income, estimate the subsidy (including state-funded salaries) required to operate break-even. As part of the return on investment analysis, we will expect user-fee income to contribute significantly to cost recovery.

The following outline provides a framework to analyze costs and income. Please list all costs incurred, regardless of how they will be handled. For income, define how products/services will be offered (what units at what unit price), and match the projected income from a sales forecast with income funding for costs.

An Excel template is provided to help you organize this analysis of costs and income. Appendix A provides instructions for its use.

Fixed Costs

• Personnel/benefits
• State-funded staff
  • Income-funded staff
• Capital equipment (describe source of funding for each)
  • Scientific equipment reserve (cannot exceed 20% of revenue nor be retained >3 years)
  • New instruments
• Other operating expenses
  • Maintenance contracts
  • Phone, FAX
  • Shipping costs
  • Office supplies
  • Etc.

Variable costs

• Costs of creating each unit of product/service (e.g., reagents, supplies, etc., per sample)
• Time and materials equipment repair

Rate structure

• Propose a rate structure specifying the price of each unit of product/service

Sales forecast

• Project the number of units to be sold for each unit of product/service.
• Show that your sales forecast and subsidies (e.g., state-funded staff, F&A contribution, etc.) produce the necessary funding to cover all fixed and variable costs.
• Describe how the core facility personnel will conduct the business administration of the facility. How will you invoice your customers? Who will handle accounting? Accounts receivable?

If this is an existing facility, report on past performance, including:

• Users served
• Costs and income
• Salary of personnel (from all sources)
• Investments made (replacement or upgrade, for example)
• Sources of support.

Essentially, in addition to a narrative about performance and users, you should re-create the business plan spreadsheet to reflect past fiscal performance.

Core facilities that receive financial support from OVPR are subject to the following annual reporting requirements. The deadline for receipt of report is 31 March:

1    Narrative
1.1 Brief summary of facility, products and services provided, user community
1.2 Detail any changes to the facility's Strategic Plan
2    Current Management Plan
2.1 Organizational Chart
2.2 Current position assignments
2.3 Explanation of any changes
3    Business Plan
3.1 Spreadsheet projecting current fiscal year (about to end), including current rate structure
     (an update of this spreadsheet is due on 1 August with actual fiscal year revenue, expenses)
3.2 Spreadsheet projecting next fiscal year revenue and expenses, including future rate structure
3.3 Explanation describing projections, including justification of any changes to rate structure

Download the Excel spreadsheet template.

The template is designed to record annual costs (debits) as well as contributions and income (credits). For new facilities (or new requests), you should plan to project three years of operations, filling out one copy of this template per fiscal year (07/01 – 06/30). Otherwise, follow the business plan reporting in section 5 Reporting Requirements. Rename the document with the name of your core facility and which fiscal year it represents (e.g., PAMS_FY2010.xls; fiscal years are named for the calendar year in which they end). For existing facilities, also supply one template with actual costs and income from the most recent fiscal year (see section 4 Past Performance).

1. Facility costs may be paid using revenue from different sources and this should be indicated in this template. Revenue can come from Income or from Contributions. If you get (or are asking for) support from sources other than OVPR (department, college, etc.), go to the SUMMARY worksheet and fill in the turquoise-highlighted cells. Provide the name of the unit ('Source 1', etc.) and the amount provided or requested. (Do not edit any other cells on the SUMMARY worksheet.) OVPR support will be provided for explicit costs and is tracked on each worksheet.
2. The template has four separate worksheets on which you should list costs. ALL costs associated with the core facility, regardless of source of money, should be listed. As you complete each worksheet, the totals will be calculated automatically and appear also on the SUMMARY worksheet. First, use the Salary_Fringe worksheet to list the personnel who have any component of their salary paid for effort in the facility. Replace the placeholders (e.g., 'Title A', 'Name A') with the title of the position and the name of the person holding that position (LAST, First). Then apportion the salary of that person among the sources (either from OVPR or all other revenue, labeled 'Income+Contrib'). Separately list the fringe benefits, unless the salary is paid from state funds associated with a given source (then explicitly enter 0 for fringe).
3. Use the Equipment_Purchase worksheet to indicate any equipment you have purchased or plan on purchasing and which source will be used to make the purchase. Replace the placeholders (e.g., 'Equipment A') with actual abbreviated equipment descriptions. Note that if a piece of equipment was purchased through sponsored funding (e.g., NSF grant), then make one of the sources 'NSF' (see step 1) and keep track of this "matching" support on the SUMMARY worksheet.
4. Use the Equipment_Maintenance worksheet to indicate the costs of any maintenance contracts or other maintenance costs for facility equipment (new or old). Again replace the placeholders with abbreviated equipment descriptions and indicate the source of the funds to pay for this.
5. Use the Admin_Operations worksheet to list expenses associated with both administrative costs and the operational costs of the facility. Both fixed costs (e.g., telephone, office supplies, software, etc.) and variable costs (e.g., reagents, supplies that vary with volume of products or services) should be indicated on this worksheet. Replace the placeholders (e.g., 'Item A') with actual names of expenses.
6. Use the Income worksheet to report past performance (previous fiscal year) or to project future expected income. This worksheet is designed based on a rate structure for units of product or service. Replace the placeholder (e.g., 'Service/Product A') with actual product or service (e.g., 'spectrometer hours' or '96-well sequence analyses'), then indicate the number of units delivered (or expected to be delivered) in that fiscal year (in the 'Units' column) and the rate charged per unit of service or product (in the 'Rate' column). The total income will be calculated automatically. If there are other services or products that do not fit this Units/Rate format, use the other placeholders (e.g., 'Other Income U') and just fill in (projected) income in the 'Income' column.
7. Totals are calculated automatically on each worksheet and transferred automatically to the SUMMARY worksheet. If your (projected) income is larger than the costs you have charged to the 'Income' source, then the Balance on the SUMMARY worksheet will be positive. This is only allowed if you can utilize the Working Capital Reserve option of the Service Center policy. The goal is a Balance of $0, meaning that revenue matches cost.