In-kind contributions are a form of support for not-for-profit organisations, communities, or infrastructures. Such contributions represent the provision of services or activities to an organisation by one of its members, valued in monetary terms according to rules agreed upon beforehand by the members of the organisation, and accounted for as part of the member’s contribution to the budget. The contribution can be in the form of a direct provision of a tangible asset to the infrastructure or an expenditure incurred directly by the member, which benefits the infrastructure and satisfies its high-level principles or objectives1.

In-kind contributions include goods, access to and use of services and facilities, expertise in the form of staff time, provision of or access to equipment. They must be viewed as necessary to carry out tasks of and in the infrastructure and meet the objectives commonly agreed by the members. The value of the contribution should be assessed according to the accounting rules agreed upon by the members in the infrastructure through a governance structure. These rules may rely on the costs incurred by the contributor or on standard cost equivalents defined to ensure fairness among partners (this applies in particular to the accounting of personnel costs). For research infrastructures, in-kind contributions represent a revenue stream. Even though they are not monetary contributions, they may represent a large portion of the research infrastructure’s revenue2.

In-kind contributions help to build relationships within an infrastructure as the providers support the mission and activities without the need for large investments of cash and can collaborate to provide contributions jointly. During the construction of the infrastructure contributors become partners in that they may take over the responsibility of construction tasks and equipment, and effective interfacing with other parts of the infrastructure . Fixed-term projects with specific goals and set of partners is an effective method in the solving of start-up difficulties. Ensuring that a provider is informed of what is done with their in-kind contribution encourages them to take on a greater role in development of the infrastructure3.

A contribution from a DARIAH-EU affiliated institution passes through a submission and assessment workflow that determines:

  1. The original URI accessed in 2017 is now dead. We have not been able to locate another source for the original documentation. ↩

  2. ibid. ↩

  3. ibid. ↩