NSERC-SSHRC Sustainable agriculture research initiative

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Funding your research project

You can request $500,000 to $2,000,000 per year from NSERC and SSHRC for four years; applications for projects less than four years will not be accepted. Cash contributions from partner organizations are not required. You cannot use an Alliance grant or a SSHRC Partnership grant to support secret or contract research.

You and your co-applicants may receive funds from other sources to cover direct costs of your project. These sources of funds could include cash contributions provided by other funding agencies, and such funds would add to and complement those requested from NSERC and SSHRC. You must include all of the project's direct costs funded by sources other than NSERC or SSHRC in the budget table. All costs must be explained in your application and will be considered in the merit assessment stage.

In-kind contributions are important for the success of the project. All partner organizations participating in the project must play an active role in it and make in-kind contributions through such involvement (see the Alliance grants: Partner organizations page for more details). In-kind contributions are considered in the merit assessment of your proposal (see the Alliance grants: Review of your application).

Eligible expenses

For full project applications, funds from NSERC and SSHRC cover the direct costs of the research and are paid to eligible universities. The funds from NSERC and SSHRC cannot be used to buy equipment, products or services from partner organizations, nor to cover any part of the travel and travel-related subsistence expenditures for partner organization personnel.

You can only include NSERC- and SSHRC-eligible direct costs of research in your project budget, such as:

• salary support for undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctoral fellows to perform research and related training
• salary support for technicians and research professional personnel
• materials and supplies
• activities that support collaborations and knowledge mobilization related to the project, including the costs associated with building relationships with communities
• activities to develop and grow the research collaborations with the partner organizations and relevant communities and/or end users
• limited costs towards course load reduction, for replacement of faculty to support college^{Footnote *} faculty members' involvement in the research project (up to $9,000 per course load reduction per semester per faculty, or the equivalent of 0.1 full-time-equivalent positions)

Refer to the guidelines on the use of grant funds in the Tri-agency guide on financial administration or contact NSERC or SSHRC to confirm the eligibility of proposed expenses related to the above.

You can also include the costs of equipment, provided that the equipment is:

• essential to achieving the objectives of the research project
• incremental to the equipment already available at the university or at the partner organization's location

Your total expected equipment cost (including operation and maintenance) cannot exceed $400,000 over the duration of the project.

For projects involving multiple partner organizations and/or universities, you may include project management costs, up to 10% of the total direct research costs (see Guidelines for research partnerships programs project management expenses).

To facilitate partnerships and build successful multidisciplinary and multi-sectoral collaborations required to establish strong teams and relevant proposals, preparatory funds are available to NSERC- and SSHRC-eligible researchers. Up to $50,000 can be requested to support application-related expenses. Only one application for preparatory funding can be submitted per team and it is expected that ~20 awards will be available. The application due date for preparatory funding is May 8, 2023. The award start date for preparatory funds is expected to be June 1, 2023.

Preparatory funds may be used for application-related expenses, such as:

• Meetings costs (the use of conference calls is encouraged whenever possible)
• Travel and accommodation expenses of academic participants as well as local community advisors, such as Indigenous elders or agricultural producers, for any face-to-face meetings required to develop the proposal (partner organizations are expected to demonstrate commitment to the project by covering their own costs)
• Communication, secretarial, clerical and coordination services over and above what is available from the universities involved and the partner organizations; salaries of technical writers may be requested but only up to a maximum of $15,000

NSERC and SSHRC funds cannot be used for:

• Salaries for university personnel
• Travel costs of employees from partner organizations

What's next?
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