SSHRC Partnership Engage Grants (Canada)

The small-scale, stakeholder-driven partnerships supported through Partnership Engage Grants are meant to respond to immediate needs and time constraints facing organizations in non-academic sectors. In addressing an organization-specific need, challenge and/or opportunity, these partnerships let non-academic organizations and postsecondary researchers access each other’s unique knowledge, expertise and capabilities on topics of mutual interest.

Types of partnerships

• Following are some possible formal partnership approaches. Applicants are in no way limited to these approaches and are welcome to combine some of the features described below.
  • Cross-sector co-creation of knowledge and understanding: Partnerships to foster innovative research, training and the co-creation of new knowledge on critical issues of intellectual, social, economic and cultural significance.
  • Partnered knowledge mobilization: Partnerships designed to synthesize, apply and mobilize new and existing social sciences and humanities research knowledge in accessible ways to build institutional capacity and to increase the national and international impact and stature of Canadian research.

Objectives

• Partnership Engage Grants are expected to respond to the objectives of the Research Partnerships program.
• The objectives of the Research Partnerships program are to:
  • strengthen knowledge and understanding by leveraging perspectives from across multiple disciplines and sectors;
  • support collaboration among postsecondary institutions, and between postsecondary institutions and organizations from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors, to co-create knowledge and increase use of research outputs;
  • mobilize research knowledge, within academia and other sectors, that can lead to intellectual, cultural, social and economic outputs and outcomes;
  • increase the accessibility and use of research knowledge within and beyond the postsecondary sector; and
  • support a high-quality training experience for students and/or postdoctoral researchers.

Funding Information

• Partnership Engage Grants are valued at $7,000 to $25,000 for one year.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants
  • Applications can be submitted by an individual researcher or a team of researchers (consisting of one applicant and one or more co-applicants and/or collaborators).
  • Applicants must be affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution that holds institutional eligibility at the time of application. Researchers who maintain an affiliation with a Canadian postsecondary institution, but whose primary affiliation is with a non-Canadian postsecondary institution, are not eligible for applicant status.
  • Applicants who have received a SSHRC grant of any type but have failed to submit an achievement report by the deadline specified in their Notice of Award are not eligible to apply for another SSHRC grant until they have submitted the report.
  • Postdoctoral researchers are eligible to be applicants if they have formally established an affiliation with an eligible institution at the time of application, and maintain such an affiliation for the duration of the grant period.
  • Federal scientists who are affiliated with a Canadian postsecondary institution must demonstrate that their proposed research or research-related activity is not related to either the mandate of their employer or the normal duties for which they receive payment from that employer.
• Institutions
  • Grant funds can be administered only by an eligible Canadian postsecondary institution. Institutions proposing to administer a grant awarded under this funding opportunity must hold or obtain institutional eligibility.
• Co-applicants
  • Individuals are eligible to be co-applicants if they are formally affiliated with any of the following:
    • Canadian: eligible postsecondary institution; not-for-profit organization; philanthropic foundation; think tank; or municipal, territorial or provincial government.
    • International: postsecondary institution.
    • Postdoctoral researchers who are affiliated with a postsecondary institution are eligible to be co-applicants.
• Collaborators
  • Any individual who makes a significant contribution to the project is eligible to be a collaborator. Collaborators do not need to be affiliated with an eligible Canadian postsecondary institution.
  • Individuals from the private sector or federal government can participate only as collaborators.
• Partner organizations
  • Only one Canadian or international organization from the public, private or not-for-profit sector can be involved as a partner organization. Postsecondary institutions and scholarly associations are not eligible as partner organizations. Organizations collaborating with postsecondary institutions (e.g., a network) can be considered eligible as long as they are a separate entity from the postsecondary institution (i.e., a stand-alone organization in the not-for-profit, private or public sector). The partner organization must be at arm’s length (independent) from the academic institution and the applicant. A partner organization is not at arm’s length if the applicant:
    • has an ownership position in the partner organization;
    • is employed by the partner organization in any role, whether salaried or not; or
    • is related (i.e., connected by blood relationship, marriage or common-law partnership or adoption) to a person who controls, or who is a member of a governing board that controls, the partner organization.
  • The partner organization must be under the effective day-to-day management control of someone other than the postsecondary institution, applicant, co-applicant(s) or other participant with financial authority on the grant (in a private sector organization this precludes these individuals from holding key executive positions, such as president, CEO, chief scientific officer or vice-president R&D).

Ineligibility Criteria

• Students are not eligible for applicant or co-applicant status on a Partnership Engage Grant.

For more information, visit SSHRC.