Individuals and institutions

Apparently, good things don't come in threes. No equipment today.

Meanwhile, I've got a first draft of my proposal budget. I think this project is getting pretty close to being handed over to the Office of Sponsored Research.

Hm. Methinks that term, "Office of Sponsored Research," might need a little explaining.

Funding administration varies quite a bit from country to country. In Canada, grants are generally awarded to an individual. Nobody else can touch a nickel of the money that's awarded to a researcher (or researchers, in cases of collaborative grants).

In the U.S.A., grants are generally awarded to institutions. This is actually a fairly substantial difference. First, this means not all the money goes to the researcher. Institutions get a cut of all grant money in the form of "indirect costs." It's worked into the proposal in advance, and it can be a big cut. On my campus, it's over 50%, and I think that figure is higher on other campuses. The indirect costs are supposed to feed back into the university so that they can provide infrastructure like secretaries, buildings, janitorial services, and so on. I'd feel better about these "indirect costs" if there weren't a set of unfinished labs in my building...

But I digress.

The habit of making grants to "institutions" instead of "individuals" also means that "Sponsored Research" offices play a sizable role in grant application. I cannot submit my own grant application to the NSF; I have to submit it first to the Office of Sponsored Research, who vets the application, and they ultimately submit the proposal to the funding agency.

One reason why I want to get this proposal in early is because, not having been through this process before, I want to leave plenty of time to fix any foul-ups that the Office of Sponsored Research points out to me.