Unallowable cost
A cost a grant will not pay for, either because the government-wide rules exclude it or because the programme’s own notice does. Lobbying, fundraising, entertainment, fines and bad debt are unallowable across almost every federal programme regardless of what the notice says.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Disallowed cost
In detail
The government-wide exclusions are absolute and they are not negotiable in a budget. A recipient may still incur them; it simply may not charge them to the award, directly or through an indirect rate.
Programme-level exclusions sit on top and vary. A notice that will not fund construction, or will not fund staff already funded by another award, is adding to the list rather than replacing it.
Against supplanting
An unallowable cost is a category the programme will not pay for at all. Supplanting is a perfectly allowable cost being used to replace funding that already existed. A budget can be made entirely of allowable costs and still be a supplanting budget, which is why the two are different questions and neither is a flag on a record.
How GrantTrove stores it
- `use_of_funds` records what a notice says the money is for. It does not record prohibitions, because most notices state prohibitions in prose and a field that was empty on most records would read as "nothing is prohibited".
- The record links the notice via `source_url`, which is the document that governs. We do not paraphrase a prohibition into a field we would then be asserting.
Common questions
Do you flag programmes that prohibit construction?
No. Prohibitions are stated in prose and we do not convert prose into a flag. The notice is linked on every record.
Can an unallowable cost go in the cost share?
Generally no. Cost share is normally held to the same allowability rules as the award itself.
Is lobbying ever allowable?
Not with federal award funds. An organisation may lobby with other money, subject to its own legal limits.