The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (of Canada; SSHRC) releases results of their main individual funding programs in April (Insight) and June (Insight Development). If you have received good news, congratulations!
You got the funding. Now comes the hard part. You can no longer hide your brilliant potential under the bushel of insufficient funds.
Ethics = access to funds
If your project needs ethics clearance contact the ethics office of your university and get the dates and forms you need. You can’t access your funds until you have it. There is usually a process for getting an initial clearance so you can get started while you go through the complete process. This will allow you to hire an RA to help you with the ethics process, among other things.
Prepare a project plan
You don’t have to use your proposal as a project plan. SSHRC is different from some other granting councils (e.g. ESRC in the UK) in that you have considerable leeway about how to allocate the money once awarded. You are not tied to your proposed budget. You are only tied to your proposed objectives. In fact, there are lots of good reasons to update your plan, beginning with the fact that you have presumably been continuing to work on your research since you submitted that proposal and your ideas have developed since then.
Now that you have funding, you have a budget number. Use that as the basis of your project budget. Your decisions are now governed by SSHRC’s rules on eligible expenditure not by your proposal. You can’t pay for teaching release, alchohol, or cell phones but a lot of the other things you’d really like are probably eligible. Check with your research accountant (in the finance office) if you aren’t sure.
Especially in this first summer, you might consider hiring an RA that has project management experience and knowledge, perhaps in addition to a subject expert. Hiring someone to do that work could free you up to do the work that really makes your heart sing, and give you a plan to make the management of this grant less stressful as you move forward. Suitable candidates might be lurking in a different department (perhaps doing an MA in business or non-profit management). Or you could hire a part-time administrator/project manager who isn’t a student. You might even club together with other funded colleagues to create a position that’s attractive for an administrator with suitable experience.
You can also update your training plan to be responsive to both your needs and the available students and other potential research staff. Like any job advertisement, you want to know that there will be strong candidates for your position. If you don’t have appropriate graduate students, you could use your funds to hire a post-doctoral fellow. Or hire final year undergraduates, or even students who are graduating this year. The tasks will need to be appropriate to the level of the people hired. The key considerations are how these people will contribute to achieving your objectives and what kind of training you can give them.
Focus on the significance of the contribution to knowledge
You have been funded because the committee believed that you were likely to make a significant contribution to knowledge. As you update your plan, keep that in mind. Copy the objectives you outlined in your proposal and put them somewhere easy to refer to. That is the significant contribution you have been funded to make. Throughout the life of this grant, you will have to make adjustments and changes.
- costs will go up (or down)
- appropriate students won’t be available
- data collection will throw up surprises
- you’ll find things you didn’t expect in that archive
- an opportunity will arise you hadn’t foreseen
You have the flexibility to respond to these circumstances.
No one will ever look at your proposal again. You proposed to achieve certain objectives. You made the case for that and your case was accepted. You proposed a methodology for achieving them, a plan for training students, a dissemination plan, and a budget. You will not be judged on whether or not you achieved what you proposed. You will only be judged on whether you make a significant contribution to knowledge.
Whenever you make a change to your plan ask yourself, “What will lead to the most significant contribution to knowledge?”
Have a great summer getting started on your brilliant research.
Edited April 7, 2016.