Important Information for Applicants and How to Prepare your Budget

Important Information for Applicants

Respecting Internal Deadlines

RMS establishes its own deadlines for grant applications to external funding agencies at two weeks prior to the agency deadline. Since a large volume of applications is received by RMS as the deadlines approach, it is extremely important that deadlines be met (especially for larger agencies such as NSERC, CIHR, or SSHRC) for the application to be fully processed and delivered to the agency on time.

For smaller funding agencies, RMS asks that applications be delivered within a "reasonable" time prior to the agency deadline. Please call RMS at (613) 562-5841 or consult the RMS web site to keep up-to-date on internal deadlines.

For more details, contact your Faculty's Research Facilitator.

 

Careful Review of Funding Agency's Requirements

It is the responsibility of the researcher to ensure that agency requirements are met. Failure to respect agency criteria usually means rejection of the application by the funding agency.

Ownership of Equipment

Unless there are contractual obligations or granting agency regulations are to the contrary, equipment, including computers, purchased with research funds administered by the University of Ottawa belongs to the University of Ottawa.

Who makes copies?

Researchers are responsible for providing the correct number of copies requested by the funding agency; an extra copy must always be included for RMS.

 

 

 

Last Minute Proposals

For both small and large funding agencies, the delivery of the grant application to the agency becomes the responsibility of the researcher within the last 24 hours before the agency deadline.

 

Intellectual Property

Many granting agencies make no claim on intellectual property developed under their grants. As such, the University of Ottawa's policies and procedures depicted in the Intellectual Property section of this Guide apply.

Some granting agencies, especially medical research foundations are beginning to impose claims on intellectual property developed under their funding.

Researchers should carefully review program literature before applying for funding and should ensure that they understand and agree to any conditions relating to intellectual property when accepting funding from any granting agency.

How to Prepare your Budget

Preparing Your Budget

When preparing a budget for a project, it is critical to budget realistically. The cost proposal should reflect the researcher's best estimate of the actual cost to perform the work, including appropriate overheads and a contingency for unexpected costs.

The danger of underestimation is that the resulting grant or contract will not provide sufficient resources to perform the work. For contracts, if the sponsor's resources are limited (as is often the case), one must question whether or not the planned work can be accomplished within the proposed budget. If not, one should re-examine the scope of the work and discuss it with the proposed client to determine if it can be narrowed or focused more specifically to meet the sponsor's objectives within the available financial resources.

Avoid over-estimating or under-estimating your budget since either of these results will indicate to the reviewers that costs for the project have not been carefully assessed. The danger of overestimation is that it increases our costs making us uncompetitive, and causing the sponsor to question our ability to perform a cost-effective job.

Inflation

Do not forget to include an appropriate allowance for inflation when preparing the budget for longer term projects, unless this is explicitly forbidden by the sponsor's policies. Salaries are particularly susceptible to adjustments over the life of a grant or contract, both for inflation and progress through the ranks.

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Last Updated: 9/28/2010