YEP: Securing Project Funding

YEP budget 

The total budget for the YEP project was $350,000. Check out the downloadable resources below to see categories of costs to consider for your CEnR Budget.  

The YEP project was funded by a grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, which has fewer and less strict policies and procedures compared to some funders, such as the federal government. However, it is important to understand your specific funder’s guidelines for allowable costs. This ensures you can make plans and secure supplementary funding if certain costs critical to CEnR are not covered.  

Child Trends Labor: When forming the project team, we created a balance of senior and junior team members, which allowed us to support staff who wanted to lead tasks, develop new skills, and learn more about CEnR. This balance was also essential for staying in budget on this project. When considering the level of effort (LOE) for team members, we budgeted for the core team, communications team, and ad hoc team members. Labor costs accounted for 63% of the total project budget.  

• Core team: YEP was a five-member core team of Child Trends staff. Costs included salary and benefits for the co-PIs, research scientist, research analyst, and senior research assistant from Child Trends.  
• Communications team: The communications team processed products for dissemination. Planning for dissemination products early in the project ensured time allocated for the communications team was sufficient for dissemination. Bottom-up estimation was used for the communication team members, too.  
• Ad hoc supports: Throughout the project, ad hoc team members worked to complete discreet tasks such as scheduling focus groups and interviews, taking notes during data collection, cleaning transcripts, copyediting, or fact checking.  

Subcontract agreements: YEP is a project that builds on the expertise of two leaders in the field, including one external to Child Trends. Dr. Julie Petrokubi from Education Northwest was a valuable member of the team as she advised this work. Given her role, we established a subcontract with Education Northwest that included a defined scope of work for Julie. Subcontractor costs accounted for 3% of the total project budget. 

Travel: YEP did not include any travel costs. Since our research group members were located across the country, we always met and conducted data collection virtually.  

Software for analysis: We used Dedoose for qualitative analysis; subscriptions range in price from $13.95 to $17.95 per month per team member.  

Incentives: People who participated in data collection efforts were offered compensation for their time and effort through incentives. Incentives for participating in an interview were $50 in the form of an electronic gift card via Giftbit. It’s important to anticipate and budget for potential fees. Some companies may have activation fees or fees depending on the means of purchase (i.e., paying with a credit card).   

Contractors: Research group members were considered contractors for this project. Each of them was compensated $100/hour for up to 40 hours (or up to $4,000 total) through the course of the project. They submitted monthly invoices with their hours worked. Contractor costs accounted for 1% of the total project budget. 

Transcription: We did not budget for a transcription service. Instead, we used Microsoft Teams for our virtual data collection, which were recorded and transcribed within the application. Child Trends staff members then cleaned the transcripts before data analysis. 

YEP contracts  

After finalizing the agreement with the funder, subrecipients and contractors also need to have finalized agreements before you can start the work. Our memorandum of understanding with research group members set expectations for the work we would do together and how they would be compensated for their involvement.