Uncertain about indirect costs rates
We're a medium-ish nonprofit with federal, state, and local funding. Let me start by saying that our admin and facility costs are only about 5% of our total agency budget. We have been talking about negotiating an indirect cost rate for years and the work has fallen in my lap mostly because I can generate an excel spreadsheet. Our cognizant agency gave us a workbook that a different agency created and said we should use that to walk us through the process. I've recently completed the workbook and it's calculating a whopping 50% indirect cost rate. The de minimus is 15% for our cognizant agency. If we submit this they're going to laugh us into next week, right? We don't have a lot of peer agencies in the area that have a NICRA to feel out and discuss this with. Some additional things to know is our federal grants have an admin cap either way and having a larger indirect cost rate doesn't mean unlimited money or anything. We'd still only be able to get a certain percent of the contract as admin it just makes billing admin easier. A big reason why the calculated rate is so high is because the majority of our direct program expenses fall into categories excluded from the modified total direct costs (MTDC) base. Simply we spend half our budget on direct client services that the indirect cost rate does not calculate from. Hopefully I'm explaining myself well. So long question short, does 50% seem totally crazy and what rates have you need negotiated/approved?