Many grant projects rely on people who are not on the payroll: volunteer tutors, an outside evaluator, a part-time designer, a partner's staff member. If the application blurs who is who, the reviewer cannot tell what the project depends on, and your finance team inherits the confusion at reporting time.
This article shows how to describe each kind of contributor, how the cost rules treat them and how to keep the narrative and the budget consistent.
Sort everyone into one of four groups
Before you write anything, list every person who will contribute to the project and place each in a group:
- Staff: employees paid by your organization, whether or not the grant pays their salary.
- Volunteers: people who give time without pay.
- Consultants and contractors: individuals or firms you pay to deliver a service.
- Partner staff: people employed by another organization that has agreed to contribute to the project.
Each group appears in a different place in the application. Staff and contractors usually show up in the budget. Volunteers may show up as cost share or as unpaid capacity. Partners need an agreement. The article on key personnel explains why the names you choose to list matter once the award is made.
Describe volunteers by role, supervision and value
Volunteers are real capacity, but a reviewer will ask how reliable that capacity is. Give each volunteer role a short description:
- What they do. Tie the role to a specific activity in the work plan.
- How many and how often. For example, twelve tutors, three hours a week.
- How they're recruited and trained. Name the screening and training the role requires.
- Who supervises them. A paid staff member should be accountable for the volunteers.
If the funder requires or counts cost sharing, volunteer time may be part of it. Under 2 CFR 200.306(e), volunteer services furnished by third-party professional and technical personnel, consultants and other labor may be counted as cost sharing if the service is necessary for the program. The rates must be consistent with those paid for similar work by the recipient, or by the local labor market if the skills are not found in your workforce. Under 2 CFR 200.306(b) and (j), contributions must be verifiable in your records and documented. That means volunteer hours need to be logged, not estimated at the end of the year.
Foundations and state agencies set their own cost-share terms, so check the guidelines. The article on cost share and match covers the wider picture.
A worked example
Say a literacy nonprofit is applying for a grant to expand after-school tutoring. It plans twelve volunteer tutors for three hours a week over 30 weeks.
| Item | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Volunteer hours | 12 tutors × 3 hours × 30 weeks | 1,080 hours |
| Hourly rate for similar paid work | Organization's own rate for a paid tutor | $25 |
| Value of volunteer time | 1,080 × $25 | $27,000 |
The narrative explains that a paid program coordinator trains and supervises the tutors, and that the organization will keep sign-in sheets. The $27,000 appears as in-kind cost share only if the funder's rules allow it. The hours and rate are labelled as an illustration.
Scope consultants and contractors in writing
Outside help is common for evaluation, specialized training, design and technical work. A reviewer wants to know why you need an outsider, what they will deliver and how you'll choose them.
For each consultant or contractor, define:
- The scope of work: the tasks and the products they deliver.
- The timeline: start, key milestones and end date.
- The basis for the cost: a rate and an estimate of time or a fixed fee tied to deliverables.
- How you will select them: the process, and any conflicts of interest you'll check.
For federal awards, the cost principle at 2 CFR 200.459 allows professional and consultant service costs when they are reasonable for the services rendered and not contingent on recovery of the costs from the Federal Government. Factors include the necessity of contracting given your own capability, the qualifications of the provider and the customary fees they charge, and the adequacy of the agreement, such as a description of the service, an estimate of the time required, the rate of compensation and termination provisions. Those factors read like a checklist for your scope of work.
Procurement rules apply too. Under 2 CFR 200.318(a), recipients and subrecipients must maintain and use documented procedures for procurement under a federal award, and under 200.318(i) they must keep records of each procurement, including the rationale for selecting or rejecting a contractor. Check your own procedures before you name a firm in an application, and ask your grants officer whether a competitive process is required for your amount.
Know when a "contractor" is really a partner
A partner who carries out part of the program is not the same as a vendor who sells you a service. Under 2 CFR 200.331, a subaward is for carrying out a portion of the federal award, while a contract is for obtaining goods and services for the recipient's use. The regulation says the substance of the relationship matters more than the form of the agreement.
Under 2 CFR 200.308(f)(6), subaward activities that were not proposed in the application and approved in the award require prior written approval. So if a partner will deliver real program activities, say so in the application. The article on pass-through funding and subawards explains how the money and the responsibilities move.
Also check whether a contractor is truly independent. Section 200.318(h) tells recipients to consider proper classification of employees when selecting contractors. If someone works under your direction, on your schedule, for most of the year, talk to HR or counsel about whether contractor status is right.
Keep the narrative and the budget consistent
A reviewer compares the narrative with the budget. For each non-staff contributor, check that:
- The narrative names their role, and the budget shows the cost (or the in-kind value).
- A consultant appears in the budget as a contractual cost, not as personnel.
- Volunteer time that you claim as cost share appears in the cost-share table with its basis.
- Any person named in the award as key personnel, including contractors, is one you are prepared to keep.
Your next step
List every non-staff contributor to your next project and write one line for each: who they are, what they do, how they are paid or valued and who supervises them. Where a line is hard to write, the role is not yet clear enough for an application.
If you are short on drafting time, SoliContraX can start from your funding notice and the role descriptions in your files, so you get a draft staffing section and budget narrative to correct and finish. See how to get started.