Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A university PI commits 5 percent of unfunded effort as voluntary cost share to strengthen a proposal.
- Is an instance
A department voluntarily contributes equipment time worth $40,000 to the project budget.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An overhead waiver by the sponsor is not voluntary cost share by the recipient.
- Not an instance
A casual mention of institutional support in a proposal narrative, without a budget commitment, is not auditable cost share.
Editorial commentary
Voluntary cost share is a contribution an applicant offers on top of what a sponsor requires — most often institutional effort, equipment time, or funds pledged in a proposal to signal institutional commitment. The label “voluntary” describes only how the commitment arose, not how it is treated afterward: once it is written into an approved budget it is called voluntary committed cost share, and from that point it must be tracked and reported exactly like mandatory cost share.
Why federal policy actively discourages it
2 CFR 200.306(a) states plainly: “Voluntary committed cost sharing is not expected under Federal research grants. The Federal agency may not use voluntary committed cost sharing as a factor during the merit review of applications or proposals for Federal research grants unless authorized by Federal statutes or agency regulations and specified in the notice of funding opportunity.” The regulation’s purpose is to stop programme officers from informally rewarding proposals that offer more matching funds than required, which would functionally penalize under-resourced applicants regardless of scientific merit.
Voluntary committed vs. voluntary uncommitted
2 CFR 200.306(k) draws a further distinction for institutions of higher education: voluntary uncommitted cost sharing — additional faculty time donated above what was agreed in the award — is not included in the organized-research base used to compute the indirect cost rate, and is not a reportable cost-share obligation unless formally written into the approved budget.
Once committed, it behaves like mandatory cost share
A voluntary committed contribution that has been accepted into the award’s approved budget is subject to the same verifiability, allowability, and non-duplication tests under 2 CFR 200.306(b) that apply to mandatory cost share, and the same reporting expectations follow it through the life of the award.
What it is not
A sponsor waiving indirect-cost recovery is not the recipient offering voluntary cost share — it is the sponsor’s own budget decision. A general statement of institutional support in a proposal narrative, with no specific budgeted commitment behind it, is likewise not an auditable cost-share obligation.
Also known as
Voluntary matching · Voluntary committed cost share · VCC
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Cost share (voluntary)"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary",
"name": "Cost share (voluntary)",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary",
"description": "A cost-sharing contribution a recipient offers beyond what a sponsor requires, typically to strengthen a proposal. Once written into the approved budget as 'voluntary committed' cost share it becomes a binding, auditable obligation under 2 CFR 200.306 -- unlike unrecorded 'voluntary uncommitted' effort.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/funding-finance#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cost-share-voluntary",
"sameAs": [
"Voluntary matching",
"Voluntary committed cost share",
"VCC"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:22:58",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T16:26:55",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
