Create the budget for your first SSHRC grant application

Next February I will be submitting my first ever SSHRC Insight Development Grant application, and I have never written a budget before. What can I ask for? How much of my budget should go to student salaries? Is there flexibility in how funds are used?

– Anonymous, French language and literatures

Answer from Dr. Editor: I think budgets are a great way to quickly understand the purpose of a grant application. When I look at a budget, I can see the type of research involved in a proposed project – archival (in travel expenses), land-based (in gifts for elders and catering for celebrations), qualitative (in honoraria), quantitative (in donations). card prices or data feeds), artistic or creative (in CARFAC fees), and so on. I can identify which types of knowledge mobilization and dissemination are a priority; how many researchers are in the team? even if there is an advisory committee for a community-based or industry-related project.

Based on my experience processing research grant applications, I see many errors in budgets. The more complex a grant is, the more errors creep in – this is almost inevitable. In this month’s article, we’re going to focus not on the weaknesses that I regularly see in grant proposals – because, like it or not, errors crop up – but rather on the strengths. So in answering your questions, I’d also like to answer one of my own: What does a budget look like great?

What can I ask for?

The most accurate answer to the question “What can I charge?” is “whatever you need to get the job done successfully” – but that answer isn’t very helpful when you’re trying to write your first budget.

The Tri-Agency Guide on Financial Administration contains a lot of information about who and what is eligible. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with this document so your reviewers don’t view your budget (and therefore your application) as uninformed or lacking credibility. But most institutions have a research office that will review your draft budget before you apply to ensure you meet these admissions criteria – so I don’t typically recommend spending a lot of time reading this guide.

Instead, I think it is important that you learn the differences between the costs allowed by the SSHRC and the costs that peer reviewers consider appropriate. For example, when I surveyed former SSHRC peer reviewers about their perceptions of budget spending, I learned that peer reviewers in the humanities are more skeptical about article processing fees charged by journals than their counterparts in the social sciences. These item processing fees can be over $3,000. Therefore, I would recommend that a humanities researcher like you, dear letter writer, ask your favorite university librarian for details on any institutional arrangements regarding open access before including OA costs in your budget; Ideally, open access will be covered by your institution, although article processing fees are a reimbursable expense.

Fortunately, the appraisers told me that they were willing to be convinced that all types of costs were reasonable for a single project. Some reviewers may frown at expensive hardware, expensive APCs, and multiple international conferences, but even these reviewers seem open to it if you tell them, with a sufficiently convincing justification, that such expenditures are necessary for a particular project.

To help you brainstorm potential budget expenses, from student salaries to travel and knowledge mobilization costs, I created a budget spreadsheet template that allows you to experiment with a range of expenses and see how they translate to SSHRC’s budget categories.

The budget categories included in this template are only line items that I would consider normal in SSHRC grant applications. It is normal to hire one or more students. It is normal to attend one or more conferences. It is normal for you to bring your trainees to one or more of these conferences to give a talk with you.

But just because an expense is normal doesn’t mean your reviewers will necessarily find it appropriate for your specific proposed project. Therefore, I suggest that in the 500 characters you need to justify each expense requested, you provide a three-part justification:

Justify Why The effort is necessary
You will need a PhD-level RA working 10 hours per week to support data collection and analysis and knowledge mobilization. You will need a laptop for this RA. You will need to attend this particular conference in this particular year to reach the scientists whose future work will influence your results.

Justify Where The numbers come from
The RA’s salary depends on your university’s agreement with your student council or the living wage in your city; The price of the laptop comes from “Big Box Store”; The location for the conference you will attend in the second year has not yet been determined, so you used Halifax as a proxy for the cost estimate.

Justify How The effort has been calculated
Show the series of additions and multiplications you used to find a specific number. My budget template displays the numbers I typically want to see in this calculation. For example, for a student’s salary, you might write: “Year 1: $30/hr. x 10 hrs/week x 48 weeks + 12% benefits (CPP, EI, WCB) = $16,128; Year 2: Year 1 + 3% cost of living increase = $16,611.84″ (132 characters) or, for a conference trip, “Flight City Name-Halifax ($600 x 2 people = $1,200) + Hotel ($220/night x 3 nights). x 2 = $1,320) + Registration ($200/person x 2 = $400) + Daily Rate ($60/day x 4 days x 2 = $480); Taxi to/from airport ($50 each way x 2 rides = $100) = $3,500 total” (242 characters).

Using this three-part strategy to justify each position ensures that your peer reviewers have the information they need to determine whether your estimated expenses are appropriate for the work you want to do.

In short: ask for what you need, justify why it is needed, and then check with your institution to see if all costs are eligible.

How much of my budget should go to student salaries?

Again, the most precise answer is not helpful: whatever percentage you need. If your scholarship necessarily involves a lot of travel, you may only be able to dedicate a third of your proposed budget to a student’s salary.

However, in the overwhelming majority of IDGs I read, more than half of the budget goes to the combined cost of student salaries and travel.

For example, consider the calculation I provided above for a single research assistant earning $30 per hour for 10 hours per week, 48 weeks per year over two years. The expenses of this single RA are $32,739.84. If you need two RAs, you’re looking at $65,479.68 out of your $75,000 maximum for student salaries alone – and that doesn’t even take into account any hardware or software they might need, or conferences which they may participate.

Are these numbers intimidating? You’re not alone. I spoke to David Bruce, Director of Research Grants at St. Francis RAs look too expensive. But trainee attitude Is expensive – that’s to be expected. In fact, it’s a fairness issue: If you underpay your RA positions, you’re making RA positions available only to those who can afford to take low-wage work. So plan for a living wage and a sensible number of hours.” I agree with David: don’t be afraid to pay your trainees well or increase their salaries year on year to take inflation into account.

If you know you want to attend a domestic conference in the first year and an international conference in the second year, enter those costs into the budget template, look at the total, and then edit the individual cells for your RAs, to see if you can afford B. hiring two RAs for 10 hours each per week or reducing this to seven or eight hours.

Is there flexibility in how funds are used?

Oh yes. I’m not one to post after an awards ceremony – I don’t get a glimpse into that world too often – but I understand that you have a lot of flexibility in how you use your grant funds once your application is successful. Double check with your research services office for the official answer here, but from my understanding as an outsider you’re probably fine if the expenses are eligible, even if you have to deviate from your plan.

Because of this flexibility, I ask the researchers I support to identify the specific conferences they would like to attend, rather than just specifying a flat fee for any old second-year conference. Your reviewers must be confident that the resources they provide will significantly advance knowledge and, where relevant, policy, practice or public discourse. Without a clear sense of how to make your results available to the world, your reviewers will not be confident that funding your project would be a wise use of scarce SSHRC funds.

So tell your reviewers what Plan A looks like. Keep it appropriate given your track record and the audiences you want to reach.

But since you can use your grant funds to go to the conference you think is best, there is no reason not to tell your reviewers what you think is the best option at this time. The same goes for the magazines you choose to publish in, the venues you write op-eds for, even the YouTube channels, newspapers, and podcasts in which you are interviewed. Your plans are allowed to change. So start with a clear plan and set a budget accordingly.

Get a copy of Letitia’s budget spreadsheet template for your next SSHRC IDG or IG application.