Intergovernmental Personnel Agreements.

The Boston University School of Public Health is committed to ensuring that our researchers are put in the best possible position to be productive and successful.

As part of this commitment, SPH strives to provide resources and minimize barriers for faculty to pursue and obtain external funding to support their work. Examples of resources include discretionary funds, pilot awards, grant writing workshops, and sabbaticals. To minimize barriers, there are few restrictions on awards based on the potential to recover indirect costs. However, due to the administrative and financial implications for our community, there are two restrictions on the use of Intergovernmental Personnel Agreements (IPAs) for coverage at SPH.

In the majority of cases, IPAs for faculty (new or renewal) are approved up to a maximum salary coverage of 20% FTE per faculty member. The need for this restriction is driven by the fact that every IPA is equivalent to a grant with a 0% indirect rate. This approach is intended to represent a compromise in the spirit of fairness and consistency, still allowing support from IPAs to represent a portion of the external funding portfolio.

SPH staff are not eligible to be supported via IPAs. There are many administrative, financial, and legal complexities associated with supporting staff via IPAs.

The BU Office of Sponsored Programs form for initiating an IPA for SPH faculty is available at bu.edu/researchsupport/formsandpolicies/form-library/.