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If your nonprofit receives government grants, you want full reimbursement for all your indirect costs.

But how can you do all the paperwork for a Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA) without it creating more stress and burnout for your accounting team?

We make it easier

A NICRA specialist will:

  • Analyze your data

  • Fill out the paperwork

  • Submit the paperwork to the government on your behalf

  • Follow up with the government and you until we’ve completed the negotiation process

  • That will depend on the size of your grant(s), the size of your organization, and the cleanliness of your data. Most of our first-time NICRA projects cost a total of $16,000-$25,000.

    Note: We can do the first phase of the project for $3,000 which will allow us to provide you a good faith estimate. You can decide to stop the project at that point.

    For your renewal or annual true up, we can typically do those in the neighborhood of $6,000-$10,000.

  • If everything is in good shape, and you're able to respond to us quickly, our process to get the NICRA application in can take less than two months. 

    The time from application to getting a notification will depend on your cognizant agency (your biggest government grantor).  Some move fairly quickly.  Some have a terrible backlog.  That grantor would be the best place to speak to that particular detail.

  • That will depend on what your true indirect costs are. It can run the gamut from 15% to 60% or more. Most nonprofits end up with a rate from 20-40%.

    After stage one of the engagement, we can provide you with a good faith estimate of what rate we will put into your application.

  • Potentially a lot!

    If you currently receive $1 million in government grants and only collect the de minimus reimbursement of 15%, but your true indirect costs come to 20%, then you’re currently raising about $50,000 every year to cover expenses that your grant could pay for instead.

    1. Reach out through the “contact us” form above.

    2. We’ll ask you for some follow up information so that we can provide a good faith estimate of what it will cost for us to do your NICRA application.

    3. We’ll schedule a discovery call where you get to meet the person who will be your project lead.

    4. We’ll sign a contract to make the project official.

    5. Project begins!

  • * Most recent audit report

    * Current year budget (details)

    * Cost Allocation Plan - If you don’t have this we can help you create it

  • We recommend you begin the process ASAP. That could be as soon as you submit your grant application to the government. This way you potentially have your NICRA approved in time for it to apply to your government grant from day one.

  • In our experience, the answer is typically yes. However, to get a definitive answer, please check with your cognizant agency (your largest government grantor).

    Keep in mind that if you apply your new NICRA rate to a current grant, the total amount of the grant will remain unchanged. So, be sure to adjust your budgets because as funds you apply to indirect costs go up that will leave fewer funds for program services.

    Pro tip: when checking in with your cognizant agency about applying your new NICRA rate to a current grant, be sure to ask them if they will allow you to apply it retroactively for the full grant period.

  • Once you get us all the documents we need, and if they're complete, accurate, etc., then your remaining time investment would just be reviewing the work with us before we hit send.  This is typically on the light side.

    Note:  the biggest time investment for you could be pulling all your data and documents together for us and potentially doing some clean up on them.  How much time goes there will vary greatly from one organization to the next.

  • The main driving factor would be the total amount of direct government grants awarded. 

    From there, it's a question of cost/benefit.  If you're receiving $1M total in grants, only charging the de minimus rate, but you suspect that your true indirect cost rate is 20 or 30% .... well, the payoff from even a 5 or 15% change on $1 million in grants could make the difference for many nonprofits between starving their administrative functions and actually setting them up for success.

  • No … or at least it happens so rarely that the professionals we checked with on the government side have never seen it happen.

    If you want to be sure, talk to your cognizant agency as that’s who would have to approve it.

    And keep in mind: A NICRA doesn’t change your total grant amount. So if you already claimed the full grant amount from two years ago using the de minimus rate, then applying your rate retroactively would not result in you being able to claim more funding.