Funding, News and Announcements

Research Support Fund (RSF) Grant Program

Dalhousie Research Services, May 2016

Established in 2003, the Research Support Fund (RSF) helps Canadian universities and colleges, along with their affiliated health research institutes and research hospitals, with the indirect costs associated with federally-funded research.  At Dalhousie University and affiliate hospitals, the RSF supports research space facility fees, electronic data access and resources, Research Services’ staff, regulatory compliance, and research commercialization and intellectual property services and support.

RSF Grant:                                                                                                                            
The Research Support Fund is distributed annually. Institutions must apply every year in May for an RSF Grant as well as submit an annual report in June.

The amount of an institution’s RSF Grant is based on the funding its researchers received from the three federal research granting agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) – in the three most recent years that data is available.

These research revenues constitute the amount of “credits” that are entered into the calculations of Research Support Fund Grants. The credits are an indication of research activity at an institution, and that indirect costs are being incurred.

Last year, Dalhousie received $7.1M from the Research Support Fund, with an additional portion of the Grant transferred to the affiliate hospitals.

As can be seen in the table below, there are higher rates of funding for institutions that receive the least amount of money from the federal research granting agencies. This means that larger research-intensive institutions receive a lower percentage from the RSF, while smaller research institutions receive a higher percentage. The rationale for this is that the Research Support Fund helps smaller universities and colleges provide adequate support to their research programs and strengthen their research capacity.

Additional information about the method that is used to calculate grants can be found on the Government of Canada’s Research Support Fund website here.
 

* In the event that Parliament changes the amount of funds available for the Research Support Fund, the fund’s steering committee reserves the right to change the value of its grants.

For more information on the Research Support Fund, please visit Dalhousie Research Services’ website here, or the Research Support Fund website here.