Grant Budgets
Level of Effort in a Grant Budget: Percent, Full-Time Equivalent and Person-Months
Grant Writing Service Editorial Team
August 13, 2026 · 4 min read
Table of contents
Key takeaways
- Level of effort is the share of a person's total paid working time committed to the project, expressed as a percentage, a full-time equivalent or person-months.
- Person-months equal percent effort times the months in the appointment: 12 for calendar, 9 for a typical academic year, 3 for summer.
- Federal awards require payroll records that reflect the work actually performed; budget estimates alone do not support charges.
- A 25 percent reduction in the project director's or principal investigator's effort needs prior approval from the federal agency.
Level of effort in a grant budget is the share of a person's total paid working time that will be spent on the project, expressed as a percentage (25 percent), a full-time equivalent (0.25) or person-months (3 calendar months a year). It drives the personnel line, usually the largest in the budget, and it is a commitment: once the award is made, your payroll records have to show the person actually worked that share.
Converting between percent, full-time equivalent and person-months
All three describe the same thing. Funders differ in which they ask for: most nonprofit and state budgets accept a percentage or full-time equivalent, while NIH and several research agencies require person-months.
- Percent to full-time equivalent: divide by 100. 25 percent is 0.25.
- Percent to person-months: multiply by the months in the appointment. 25 percent of a 12-month appointment is 3 calendar months.
- Person-months to percent: divide by the months in the appointment. 1.5 summer months out of a 3-month summer is 50 percent of the summer.
The appointment period matters for faculty. NIH splits person-months into calendar months (12-month appointments), academic months (typically a 9-month academic year) and summer months (the remaining 3 months).
| Percent effort | Calendar months (12) | Academic months (9) | Summer months (3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | 0.6 | 0.45 | 0.15 |
| 10% | 1.2 | 0.9 | 0.3 |
| 25% | 3.0 | 2.25 | 0.75 |
| 50% | 6.0 | 4.5 | 1.5 |
| 75% | 9.0 | 6.75 | 2.25 |
| 100% | 12.0 | 9.0 | 3.0 |
A professor at 25 percent during the academic year and 50 percent of the summer would be listed as 2.25 academic months and 1.5 summer months, not as a single calendar figure. Entering academic effort as calendar months understates salary for some lines and overstates it for others.
Calculating effort correctly
Effort is a share of total paid professional activity, not of a 40-hour week. A director who works 50 hours a week and spends 10 of them on the project is at 20 percent, not 25. Teaching, clinical duties, administration and other grants all count in the denominator.
Once the percentage is set, the personnel line follows the standard budget line item pattern:
Project Coordinator: 0.5 full-time equivalent × $58,000 annual salary × 12 months = $29,000
Fringe benefits: $29,000 × 28.4% = $8,236
Three details reviewers check:
- Use the actual base salary. Where an agency caps salaries, as NIH does, budget at the cap and note it; the organization covers the rest.
- Apply fringe to the charged salary only. Fringe on $29,000, not on $58,000.
- Escalate across years explicitly. In a multi-year budget, state the raise ("3 percent annually, consistent with organizational policy") rather than repeating year one.
Effort is a commitment you must document
Under 2 CFR 200.430(g), salary charged to a federal award must be based on records that accurately reflect the work performed. Those records must reasonably reflect the person's total compensated activity, not exceeding 100 percent, and support how salary was split across awards and other activities. Budget estimates alone do not qualify; they can be used for interim charging only if the organization reviews and adjusts them after the fact.
In practice that means:
- Total effort cannot exceed 100 percent across every grant, teaching, clinical and administrative duty. Agencies check this against other active awards and pending applications, and an over-commitment found at award time forces cuts somewhere.
- Charged effort must match real effort. If the budget charges 0.5 and the person spent a tenth of their time on the project, the difference is a disallowed cost.
- Reductions can need approval. Under 2 CFR 200.308, the approved project director or principal investigator needs prior agency approval to disengage from the project for more than three months or to reduce time on the award by 25 percent over the period of performance. Changes to other key personnel named in the award also require approval. This is a live post-award compliance obligation.
- Named people need budgeted effort. Listing a senior person as central to the project while budgeting no effort for them invites questions. If their role matters, budget it; if not, do not feature them.
Employees, consultants and subrecipients
Effort applies to your employees. Their salary and fringe are charged in proportion to time worked.
Consultants do not have effort with you. An individual outside your organization is budgeted at an hourly or daily rate, with no fringe, under the consultant line if the funder has one, or under contractual or other as the funder directs. Describing a consultant as "0.2 full-time equivalent" is a category error reviewers pick up.
Another organization doing part of the work is a subaward with its own budget, including its own staff effort, not effort on yours.
Writing the effort justification
The narrative should make the effort level derivable from the work described. Repeating the job title does not.
Weak: "Project Coordinator, 0.5 full-time equivalent. The Project Coordinator will coordinate the project."
Strong: "Project Coordinator, 0.5 full-time equivalent (6 calendar months a year). Schedules and staffs 208 pantry sessions annually, maintains the participant tracking system, and compiles quarterly data for the evaluator. The allocation reflects about 16 hours a week of site coordination and 4 hours of data and reporting."
Our budget narrative walkthrough has a full sample with personnel justifications in this format, and our free budget worksheet calculates salary charged and fringe from the effort you enter. For where personnel fits among the other categories, see our guide to every budget category, and for NIH applications specifically, our NIH grants guide.
