Printing Costs?

August 3, 2007 2:29 PM

When writing a grant proposal, is there a typical way of figuring out printing costs?

I have seen $0.05 per page mentioned a bunch in different places on the web. I am wondering if anyone has done this, and whether they used a per page cost to cover materials and time, or if there is a more arcane way of doing it.

posted by Danf to work & money (6 comments total)

If it's just photocpying then $.05/page is reasonable, maybe a bit low nowadays. If you're getting brochures or something done then any printing shop will give you a bid.
posted by fshgrl at 2:35 PM on August 3, 2007

There's a per-page charge for digital printing, plus sometimes a set-up charge. The per-page charge depends on a number of factors, such as number of colors, one-up or multiple-up printing, etc. If you're talking about offset or web printing, call around to local printers and get a quote. There's a certain amount of voodoo involved with print quotes, so let someone who does it professionally do it for you. If you don't feel like calling local printers, even online printers have customer service you can talk to. One way or the other, get three quotes form different printers and average them out.

printing done on a press gets cheaper, per page, the more pages you print. Digital printing stays pretty much the same per page. You'll be better off going for digital printing if you're having less than 1000 pieces printed. For more than that, offset printing will likely be cheaper.
posted by lekvar at 2:50 PM on August 3, 2007

It doesn't really matter how much it costs as long as you can support the cost you quote in your grant proposal.

For a recent grant-funded project I set up, we had three different quotes:

1) photocopying = figured out per/page cost, plus estimated how much the contractor (me) would print in a month X number of months of the project; used service agreement as supporting documentation

2) "laser" printing from a work station = ditto

3) Output printing costs = got three quotes from three different print shops, and used the lowest one, once again using estimates as supporting documentation
posted by KokuRyu at 3:02 PM on August 3, 2007

$0.05/pg is reasonable for photocopying costs.

In your proposal, if you're planning on doing any type of large scale or color production like conference posters, I'd budget that item separately. You can get quotes on per-sq ft output printing from your local printer. I typically give a 25 sq ft estimate (5' x 5') in proposals when I don't know conference requirements beforehand.
posted by junesix at 3:17 PM on August 3, 2007

If there's a particular product being produced during the term of the grant, I've always just called up a printer and asked them for an estimate. If it's just miscellaneous photocopying, we've always just guesstimated by amortizing the cost of the monthly copier service contract by the number of months the project will take, dividing by the percent of time it will be devoted to this project and throwing in some extra for paper and toner. Often, however, this cost just gets bundled in with overhead, or indirect costs.
posted by jasper411 at 4:09 PM on August 3, 2007

For the purposes of having this archived, (in case someone else has this question) I found out from someone in my organization that it's a lot cheaper than 5 cents a page:

I believe what you are hearing may be the off the street, walk-in, walk-up copier price at Insta-print. If you are sending your print job off to Insta-print with a print request order form, our contract has different prices depending on type of job (e.g. black and white versus color). If you have a job that is black & white using 8 1/2 x 11 paper, the cost is $0.011 per impression, coupled with the cost of the paper (which 4j supplies) for an approximate cost of $0.0156 per page.

I imagine that my orginazation is not unique in this.
posted by Danf at 10:21 AM on August 6, 2007