Build a research grant budget with personnel effort and indirect costs
Builds an itemized research budget and a funder-ready justification that ties every cost to the project's aims.
The prompt
Help me prepare the budget and budget justification for a research grant.
Funder and scheme: [NAME, and any budget rules: caps, eligible and ineligible costs, indirect cost rate, cost sharing]
Project duration: [e.g. "3 years"]
Aims and work plan: [SUMMARY with major activities by year]
Personnel: [roles, effort (percent FTE or months), salaries if known]
Other costs: [equipment, consumables, participant payments, travel, publication fees, software, subcontracts]
Institution rates: [fringe/benefits rate, overhead or indirect rate, inflation assumption]
Steps:
1. Build a year-by-year budget table by category, applying the rates I gave. Show formulas or calculations so I can audit them.
2. Check each item against the funder rules I provided and flag anything likely ineligible or over a cap.
3. Write a justification for each line: what it is, how the amount was calculated, and which aim it serves. Reviewers look for necessity and reasonableness.
4. Flag costs that look under-budgeted (common misses: participant incentives, open-access fees, data storage, conference travel for students, equipment maintenance).
Return the budget table, the justification narrative under the funder's headings, and a list of figures to confirm with my research office, marked [CONFIRM]. Do not invent salaries, rates, or prices.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Finance & Accounting prompts
What to fill in
- e.g. "3 years"
- SUMMARY with major activities by year
- roles, effort (percent FTE or months), salaries if known
- CONFIRM
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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