Free GMAT Practice Question

Memorandum

From: Priya Raghunathan, administrator, Community Workshop Fund
To: the review panel
Subject: Rules for the current cycle

The Fund makes at most one award a year to any applicant. An award equals 60 percent of the applicant's project budget, except that no single award may exceed $18,000.

An applicant is approved only if it meets both of these tests:

1. It documents a local match worth at least 25 percent of its project budget. A match may be made up of cash raised locally, of in-kind contributions, or of both.
2. It served at least 400 participants in the preceding calendar year.

Six applications are before the panel this cycle. The figures each applicant reported are in the Applicants tab. Questions about how a match is to be valued were settled in the exchange in the Correspondence tab.

Figures as reported by the six applicants for the current cycle.

From: Tomas Lindqvist, panel member
To: Priya Raghunathan
Subject: Valuing the local match

Two things need settling before we score these. Several applicants have logged volunteer hours instead of raising cash — do those hours count as an in-kind contribution, and if so at what value? And is the 25 percent measured against the project budget or against the award we would be making?

From: Priya Raghunathan
To: Tomas Lindqvist
Subject: RE: Valuing the local match

Volunteer hours do count as an in-kind contribution, valued at $16 an hour. But in-kind contributions of every kind together may supply no more than half of the required match; whatever is left of the requirement has to be met in cash raised locally. And the 25 percent is measured against the project budget, exactly as the memorandum says, not against the award.