These costs come from the U Sask and benefit and support research. They include such items as faculty time, space and its maintenance and servicing (utilities), equipment use and maintenance, insurance and legal services, and services provided by the University's support staff. The University of Saskatchewan seeks to recover these costs through grant and contract agreements, according to the Institutional Costs of Research Policy.
Effective May 1st, 2014 a 25% flat rate is in place for all research agreements, with the exception of clinical trial agreements, which has a rate of 30%.
Overhead is not an allowable expense for SSHRC, CIHR, or CARL.
Like the text of a grant application, budgets form part of the overall narrative you are seeking to communicate to the granting agency. It is important to ensure that all relevant expenses are accounted for, and that clearly support the goals of your proposed research. Budgets in successful grant applications demonstrate how each expense is relevant and central to the research, and show evidence of research into accurate costs, needs, and contingencies.
Student Salaries/Stipends
You must decide whether you wish to fund students via a salary or a stipend. If a student will work part-time on your project, then it is appropriate to pay the student a salary. A graduate student can receive a stipend from a grant if the work he/she is doing is part of the student's training and comprises a thesis or a cognate academic requirement.
Granting agencies do not set stipend rates for students. You must decide on an appropriate stipend for the kind of student you wish to hire. The rates you suggest should correlate with the scholarships offered by the College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
Student Salaries
If you wish to hire a student as a research assistant as opposed to funding their scholarships, what follows are the rates at which you must hire students. Please note that graduate students can work at most 12 hours a week. Specific rates of pay depend on whether the student belongs to a union (grad students), or for undergrads, on their year of study and level of experience.
Current salary ranges for all students and other employees can be found here. This link is managed by HR and should always have the most up-to-date information. See also the document at right that provides an estimate of total costs of salaries and benefits for various employee categories. This document is meant as a starting point for creating budgets; when you're ready to hire a student, you can work directly with the library's Strategic Business Advisor to determine specifics.
Student Stipends
A graduate student can receive a stipend from a grant if the work he/she is doing is part the the student's training and comprises a thesis or a cognate academic requirement. The University of Saskatchewan stipend rates for graduate students can be found here.
These are minimum numbers, but you can offer more money if you want to attract top graduate students. Benefits include the current rate of nondiscretionary benefits (CPP, EI, WC with vacation pay) on all undergraduate rates and grad student stipends. The benefits’ rates depend on the type of wages/salary. The document at right provides estimates of benefit rates, with specifics to be determined at the time of hiring in consultation with the library's SBA.
Make sure you justify why employing a student at a particular level is necessary. If the work can be done by an undergraduate, do not indicate that a graduate student will do the work.
Other Eligible Compensation Expenses
These include:
Ineligible Compensation Expenses
Dissemination of Results
You should also include costs for sharing the results outside of academia (end users, educators, practitioners, policy makers, etc.). SSHRC has taken a very strong stance on not just communicating to the “academic community” through conferences and peer reviewed journal articles. Therefore, you may want to consider being creative on areas in which you could communicate your findings to the “end user.” Consider, for instance, requesting funds to disseminate to the public via CDs/DVDs, brochures, plays, general public meetings/lectures within the community, or documentaries. You can expect that such forms of dissemination may be more time consuming and expensive than you originally anticipate, so be sure to build in a cushion for this.
Office Supplies & Stationary
General Office supplies such as pens, paper, and ink cartridges are ineligible unless they are justified by some of the research tasks included in your grant (i.e., that additional supplies and printing costs are required to conduct surveys). For a detailed list of eligible and ineligible office supplies and stationary, please consult the Tri-Agency Use of Grant Funds.
Equipment
SSHRC will only fund equipment that is not normally supplied by the university. If your research requires infrastructure, then you should consider the Canada Foundation for Innovation John R. Evans Leadership Fund.
Computer Equipment
Justify why you need a computer; it is not enough to list it as a cost, but make it clear why a new machine is instrumental to the success of your research. State too why the hardware or software supplied by the university is inadequate to your research needs. To request a quote for hardware or software, go to the IT Acquisitions.
Release Time
Release time for faculty is not a permitted expenditure for SSHRC. For the Partnership Grant competition, you are able to budget for release time for individuals from your non-academic organizational partners.
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Institutional Costs of Research (ICR)
Institutional costs of research, also known as overhead, are the costs that the university incurs in order for research to take place (e.g. building use and depreciation, utilities, maintenance and upgrade of library resources, computer and network support, management and administration of research, financial services (including purchasing and accounting), legal services, human resource services, technology transfer office services, regulatory and research compliance (including research ethics, human ethics, animal ethics, and biohazard certification), hazardous waste disposal, controlled goods, radiation safety, occupational safety, campus security and liability insurance).
Typically, universities require a certain percentage of grant dollars to be allocated to the university to cover ICR. At USask, this percentage is 25% of the funds awarded/requested, and this amount should be built into grant application budgets.
There are some exceptions:
- Tri-Agency grants (including SSHRC Explore and Exchange grants) are exempt from ICR because universities receive federal funding to cover those costs.
- Some granting agencies (e.g. CARL) do not allow their grant funds to be used towards ICR. In those instances, further discussion with the Library Dean and Research Services will likely be necessary to arrange for an exemption.
Read about USask's complete ICR policies and procedures here.
You should distinguish between travel for research purposes and travel for communication or dissemination purposes (e.g., conference travel) when explaining your travel expenses in a budget justification.
Travel costs "include reasonable out-of-pocket expenses for field work, research conferences, collaborative trips, archival work, and historical research for the grantee, research personnel, students and colleagues working with the grantee, and visiting researchers."
When writing up your budget justification, be sure to
Airfare
Make sure you budget for the average cost of an economy flight; you don’t want to budget too little and not have enough to cover the flight. It is also allowable to budget for flight cancelation insurance. For research personnel who do not receive travel health insurance, it is reasonable to buy travel health insurance policies for them. Here are some guidelines for flight costs from Saskatoon, SK.
Common Canadian Destinations:
Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal: $700
Halifax: $850
St. John's: $950
Vancouver: $500
Yellowknife: $500
Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg: $300
Common US Destinations:
New York, NY: $850
Chicago, IL: $750
Orlando, FL: $900
Los Angeles, CA: $750
Honolulu, HI: $900
Common International Destinations:
London, UK: $1300
Madrid/Barcelona, SP: $1500
Sydney, AUS: $1000
Hong Kong, CH: $1500
Tokyo, JP: $1500
Mileage
The mileage rate for the University of Saskatchewan is $0.4006/km.
Hotels/Accommodation
Make a reasonable estimate of what the hotel would actually cost. Here are some guidelines:
Canada & US: $150–$250/night
London, UK: $175–$250/night
Madrid/Barcelona, SP: $100–$200/night
Sydney, AUS: $150–$250/night
Hong Kong, CH: $150–$200/night
Tokyo, JP: $150–$300/night
Meals
The per diem meal rates of the University of Saskatchewan are:
In Saskatchewan
breakfast $8
lunch $14
dinner/supper $19
total $41
Outside of Saskatchewan and in the US
breakfast $11
lunch $16
dinner/supper $24
total $51
For per diem rates for international travel, go to http://www.njc-cnm.gc.ca/directive/app_d.php?lang=eng&let=A.
Note: If your hotel room comes with breakfast, you cannot include breakfast in your per diem as well.
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