Research Grant Administration: Post-award Resources for Faculty: Eligible Expenses

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. 

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 Studies and Research.

Other Eligible Compensation Expenses

Granting agencies may have their own spending guidelines. Tri-Agency guidelines for standard research grants can be found here.

For travel expenses, if there are differences between the granting agency's and the university's guidelines, the more stringent guidelines should be followed.

Tri-Agency eligible expenses include: 

• Consulting Fees
• Transcription costs ($25/hour)
• Translation costs ($40–$80/hour)
• Copyeditors ($40–$75/hour)
• Fees paid to research subjects, including modest incentives for participation (if included and approved in ethics application)
• Subcontract costs
• Clerical salaries related to dissemination activities
• Honoraria for guest lecturers

Ineligible Compensation Expenses

• Any part of the salary, or consulting fee, to the grantee or to other persons whose status would make them eligible to apply for grants
• Administrative (or management) charges and fees
• Discretionary severance and separation packages
• Payments of stipends to students from grants who already hold a master’s scholarship, a doctoral award or postdoctoral fellowship from an Agency

You should distinguish between travel for research purposes and travel for communication/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

1. Identify all eligible costs associated with research and dissemination travel including airfare, accommodation, per diem rates for meals, and/or mileage.
2. Keep applicant and student costs separate.
3. List each trip separately and include details, such as length of trip (#days), cost accommodations (hotel/private), airfare, per diems, and conference fees, to easily identify expenses for each member.
4. Strongly justify the need for conference travel during the first and second year of the funded research grant. Conference travel is an eligible expense; however, it must be related to the dissemination of results of the currently funded research project.

Link to list of non-eligible expenses for travel

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.

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 Campus Computer Store.

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. 

Faculty Recruitment and Retention Funds

For a list of the use and eligible expenses Click here