Economizing on Your Grant

Image: Erica P. Johnson When it comes to doing research on the cheap, few scientists can hold a candle to the late physicist Herbert Anderson. While a graduate student at Columbia in the 1930s, he needed large amounts of tungsten for the cyclotron he was building. With his grant money all used up, Anderson started stealing light bulbs from subway platforms and mining them for tungsten. He continued the practice even after getting arrested by New York City police. In the end, he got enough tungsten to complete the cyclotron, which he later shared with Enrico Fermi. Anderson went on to participate in the Manhattan Project, serving as director of the Fermi Institute in Chicago before dying in 1988 from berylliosis caused by his exposure to radioactive materials. These days, with the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and countless private granting agencies offering billions of dollars in research money, most scientists don't need to resort to petty theft to do their research. But that does not mean that grant money should be burned away. Efficiently managing grant funds is one of the least recognized and most important skills a scientist can have. For one thing, the further you can stretch your grant money, the more science you can do. The single most important aspect of managing a grant is planning ahead. "You have to think three to six months ahead," says Victoria McGovern, a program officer at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, which doles out more than $35 million (US) in research funds each year. "You won't get much sympathy if you go to your dean and beg him for more funds to keep your lab staff employed because your grant money runs out tomorrow. But if you warned him six months before, he'll be aware of the problem and be more receptive to fixing it." Even more detailed planning can save money. Bill Thies, vice president of medical and scientific affairs at the Alzheimer's Association, recommends a just-in-time supply philosophy for items that can't be bought in bulk. He also says careful scheduling can dramatically reduce animal maintenance costs. "If you order animals so they arrive the day you're going to start using them, you can save a lot of money on care and feeding that you don't have to administer while you're preparing the experiment." He adds, though, that this approach should be pursued only if you have full confidence in your suppliers. EMPTY COFFER CAPERS Even if you are as scrupulous as possible with your funds, the day may still come when the grant money is gone. If that happens, the first option is to return to your grantor to ask for an extension or supplement. Whether or not the request is approved hinges on your reason for running out of money, says John Williams, a program director at the Wellcome Trust in London, which awards more than £600 million every year in research grants. "If there's a viral outbreak in your transgenic mice population that ruins the experiment, we would certainly consider the request," he says. "But if you have no money left because you overspent wildly, you're probably not going to get any supplementary funds." If the extra money can't be obtained from the funding source, there is a last resort: the research dean at your institution. In the United States, a percentage of grant funds--the payment for indirect costs--goes into the dean's budget. In most cases, very little of that money trickles back to the scientists, who can sometimes get extra money from their departments to pay for their research. The chances of getting monies back, though, depend greatly on how the request is phrased. A well-argued petition can sometimes persuade even the most cold-hearted dean to part with some of the funds. The key, advises Thies, is to frame the appeal as a future money-earner for the institution. Begging to save your charges' jobs or salvage the experiment for the good of science is not advised. Instead, tell the dean that the finished project will surely bring in even bigger grants to the institution, Thies suggests. "Even if you don't get what you want, you've aggravated the dean for awhile," he says wryly, "so it won't be a complete waste of your time." SCRIMPING NEWS Most supplemental funding requests will probably be turned down, so instead of counting on a beneficent dean, the best strategy is to control costs as much as possible while you still have the grant, according to Thies and others. One area where intelligent scrimping can reap big rewards is equipment costs. If anyone knows how to economize on instruments, it's Tamara Doering, a molecular biochemist at the Washington University Medical School. She orders her lab refrigerators and freezers from a Sears store, and she buys refurbished equipment from online auctions. She comparison-shops for everything from light bulbs to incubator shakers. Doering stresses that it's not just a matter of getting everything at the cheapest cost, however. "I once turned down the service contract for an HPLC [high-performance liquid chromatography] detector, only to find out later that the cost of a replacement bulb was more than the service contract," she says. "The key is getting to know the equipment really well so that you know when it makes sense to cut corners and when it makes sense to spend a lot of money." Not everyone is as successful a purchaser as Doering. McGovern, of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, remembers visiting one lab in late September and seeing delivery trucks idling at the loading dock. The lab was filled with boxes of supplies. "Every last bit of space was taken up with boxes," she says. "And it was all plastics. Things like cuvettes and Eppendorf tubes. I found out that the federal fiscal year was about to end, and there was a few thousand dollars surplus left from a grant that had to be used ... The PI [principal investigator] just ordered boxes and boxes of plastics. It wasn't the most efficient use of income." Savings can be realized if you avoid purchasing everything through scientific supply catalogs. Thies, who ran a biophysics laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh, remembers buying scissors, forceps, and tubing at a hardware store. "Often it's the same manufacturer and the same product, except one batch was sent to the hardware store and the other to the surgical supply company and then marked up 400%," he relates. The one area that should never be scrimped on, though, is salaries, which make up the largest portion of most grant expenses. But it's also the most important portion. "Even if you decide to save money by hiring a poorly qualified technician, you'll just end up having to hire a second [technician] later on," says Thies. "Get the best people and pay them well." You can trim the salary tab, though. The most rewarding method is one that surprisingly few PIs use: training grants. The NIH, NSF, and many private organizations have many training grants and fellowships available for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Whenever possible, urge these members of your lab to apply for such monies. "Some people avoid it because they're afraid it will make the underlings too independent," McGovern says. "Yes, they'll be working on their own projects, but it's still going to be related to your work. And when you need an extra hand, they'll still be there." No matter how many tightwad tips you implement, the best way to control expenses is to run a good lab. "If you keep the place organized and create an exciting, invigorating place to work, everyone will cooperate to do the best science with however much money you might have," says Doering. "In the end, running a productive and communicative lab is how you save money." Sam Jaffe (sam.jaffe@verizon.net) is a freelance writer in Philadelphia.

Economizing on Your Grant

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