FISCAL SUMMARY & AUDIT
General Budget Overview The NPRB budget has evolved over time and now relies almost solely upon a portion of the annual interest from the Environmental Improvement and Restoration Fund (EIRF). This fund was established by Congress in 1997, derived from half of the settlement monies from the Dinkum Sands dispute over oil and gas leasing off the Arctic coast of Alaska. Each year, 20 percent of the annual interest of the EIRF is provided to the U.S. Department of Commerce and subsequently routed through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and granted to NPRB. The EIRF earns interest on ten-year U.S. Treasury notes so, while NPRB was insulated somewhat from the economic recession in the early 2010s. However, a slow decline in grant awards started in 2015, followed by more significant declines in the past two years. Earnings projections suggest grant awards will remain at current reduced levels for the foreseeable future. The Board is currently engaged in a strategic planning process to identify ways to increase our efficiency, find new funding partners, and maintain, rather than grow, our operations. This planning will allow NPRB to leverage and augment its annual grants and remain a reliable source of funding for high-quality marine research in the North Pacific.
This presents a very real challenge for coming years that the Board is actively addressing. The Strategic Planning working group is working to ensure that NPRB will remain a reliable funding partner for marine science while continuing the level of service and engagement with the communities we serve. The science category comprises subawards for scientific research itself, further divided into the Core RFP Program, Integrated Ecosystem Research Programs (IERPs) for the Arctic, Bering Sea, and the Gulf of Alaska, and a Long-term Monitoring (LTM) Program, as well as a Graduate Student Research Awards program. The other subcategory under science is science infrastructure, which encompasses non-RFP/IERP science and includes support for panels and committees, education and outreach, data management, planning and coordination, and meetings and symposia; in other words, those activities needed to provide the foundation for robust science and research coordination other than the scientific research itself. 10.1.2 Grant 6 – NOAA Award NA13NMF4720105 This award of $18,451,870 began October 1, 2013 (the start of FY 2014) and ended September 30, 2018. It is composed of EIRF earnings from 2012 and 2013. Competitive science activities funded with this award include 21 new projects in FY 2014, 30 projects in FY 2015, and 4 projects in FY 2017. In addition, four projects initiated in FY 2013 and one project initiated in FY 2018 were partially funded with this award, for a subtotal of almost $11 million. Titles and PI information for individual projects awarded are available on the NPRB website. This grant funded the Arctic IERP in the amount of $3.2 million and supported wrap-up of the Bering Sea IERP and the synthesis phase of the Gulf of Alaska IERP. In addition, the Long-term Monitoring (LTM) program was funded to the tune of just over $0.2 million under Grant 6, with more to come under subsequent grants, and commitments toward other science activities include panel and committee support, external meeting support, and symposia. 10.1.3 Grant 7 – NOAA Award NA15NMF4720173 This award of $17,106,122 began October 1, 2015 (the start of FY 2016) and will end September 30, 2020. It consists of EIRF earnings from 2014 and 2015. Grant 7 will fund almost $14.6 million in competitive science activities. Approximately $8.9 million from this award supported 52 research projects submitted to the Core RFP process (#1400 through #1700 series). Titles and PI information for individual projects awarded are available on the NPRB website. In addi- tion, approximately $3.4 million has been dedicated from Grant 7 to the current Arctic IERP, and $0.8 million to the Long-term Monitoring (LTM) Program. Grant 7 funds are also applied to support the Board’s expanded commitment to communicate the results of NPRB-funded science to stakeholders through grants of up to $20,000 for outreach associated with Core Program subawards. Finally, Grant 7 funds support other science activities such as panel and committee support, symposia, and external meeting support.
The grants from NOAA are currently structured so that each one is dispersed over a two-year period, but the funds are available for expenditure for a total of five years. Thus, for example,
• Grant 7 (NA15NMF4720173) was based upon interest earnings of the EIRF in 2014 and 2015 and made available to NPRB at the beginning of fiscal years (FY) 2016 and 2017, for expenditure during the five-year period FY 2016 through FY 2020. • Similarly, Grant 8 (NA17NMF4720289) was based upon the FY 2016 and 2017 earnings of the EIRF and made available to NPRB during FY 2018 and 2019, for expenditure during FY 2018 through 2022. This staggered pattern results in three separate grants being applicable to any two-year period. More detailed explanation of each grant’s apportionment is provided below. In short, each grant is divided into two main categories – administration and science – with science being further subdivided into two major subcategories and then several specific activities. Administrative expenditures are capped by NPRB’s enabling legislation at 15 percent. In earlier years, administrative costs generally were well below 15 percent, and covered staff salaries and benefits, travel for staff and board members, office supplies, accounting and audits, office rent and furnishings, computers and servers, i.e., basically all those things needed to keep the lights on and make the organization run and which are normally included in overhead. With maturity of the program, assignment of additional costs to the administrative category, and decreasing grant awards due to low interest rates, administrative costs are bumping up against the cap.
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N O R T H P A C I F I C R E S E A R C H B O A R D
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