[Fomite]

It's not so much "fees" in the traditional sense. When a grant is awarded, a researcher is asking for what are known as "Direct Costs" - the costs of staff, certain types of equipment, reagents, patient recruitment, travel and publication fees, etc.

This is not how much money goes to the university. The university negotiates an overhead rate, which gets tacked onto the cost. This can often be more than half the cost of the grant. This helps cover indirect costs - the costs of administrative staff, copier paper, computing infrastructure, startup funds for new faculty, etc.

"More bang for the buck" assumes the researcher would get that overhead back for their own use. What actually happens is researchers get the same direct costs, the overhead % is zero, etc.

For minor grants, like where crowd funding is now, this isn't such a big deal. But if this somehow became the dominant paradigm, the overhead costs are going to have to come from somewhere...