Tri-agency Research Support Fund

In recent years, ICS's Centre for Philosophy, Religion, and Social Ethics has been successful securing external funding for its research and public outreach projects. In particular, we have received several generous grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

From 2013-15, we received a $200,000 Partnership Development Grant to pursue a two-year research project entitled Justice and Faith: Individual Spirituality and Social Responsibility in the Christian Reformed Church in Canada. In 2014 we received a $25,000 Connection Grant to help fund the public conference Are We There Yet? Economic Justice and the Common Good. In 2015, we received another Connection Grant of $24,770 to support costs associated with presenting two community forums in Ottawa related to the Justice and Faith project. The forums included two professional performances of the one-act play Just Faith? by MT Space Theatre, as well as professional videography services to produce a video of the performance. This video is now part of a 'congregational toolkit' available from the Christian Reformed Church that aids church groups in creating their own discussion forums on the relationship between justice and faith. Since 2016, we have also participated as co-applicants in the successful SSHRC partnership development grant project of the Centre for Community Based Research entitled, Faith and Settlement Partnerships: Setting Immigrants and Canada up for Success.

These grant funds must all be spent directly on project outcomes; the institutional or 'indirect' costs that ICS bears to support these activities are not eligible expenses for grant monies. These costs include, but are not limited to, the following:

Thankfully, the Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat recognizes that such indirect costs are involved in carrying a research grant. For this reason, they allow grant-holding institutions like ICS to apply for additional funds to cover these costs through their Research Support Fund grant program. The Research Support Fund grant program covers five major areas of indirect costs: 1) research facilities, 2) research resources, 3) management and administration of an institution's research enterprise, 4) regulatory requirements and accreditation, and 5) intellectual property and knowledge mobilization.

For the 2020-21 academic year, ICS was qualified to receive $10,667 from the Tri-agency Research Support Fund to cover such indirect research costs as those mentioned above. ICS will apply those funds to category 2, research resources, in order to improve our information resources and defray library operation and administration costs. Specifically, we will apply this funding to costs associated with hosting ICS's online, globally accessible Institutional Repository as well as library staff salaries. 

The ICS Library, through its maintenance of the online Institutional Repository, plays a key role in archiving and disseminating the fruits of these important ICS research initiatives.

For the 2022-2023 academic year, ICS received $3,013 from the Tri-agency Research Support Fund to be used toward the same indirect research costs as those mentioned above.