The results of the March 2007 competition differ dramatically from the September 2006 competition, when only 331 grants were awarded, the lowest number in CIHR's history and the result of an extremely tight financial situation at the time of that competition. To explain why there has been such a dramatic alteration in the level of success and what this means for future funding competitions, I would like to provide some background information on CIHR's budget and recent decisions about the allocation of new resources.
Impact of Budget Increase
In Budget 2007, CIHR received a welcome $37M increase to its base budget for FY2007-08, as well as an increase in funding for the Canada Graduate Scholarships program.
CIHR decided to invest 85% of that increase, or $31.5M, to support additional projects under the OGP. CIHR is concerned about the need to maintain a healthy and stable open grants competition, ensuring that investments made in the current competition leave sufficient funds available in future years to maintain a steady level of support.
Given the timing of Budget 2007, it was too late to revisit the September 2006 competition and to fund additional new grants. But it was possible to make an 8% rollback to cuts made to projects funded in the September 2006 OGP competition, from 26.1% to 18.0%. This rollback brings the average grant size back in line with that in previous competitions, with a reasonable increase for inflation.
Recent Success an Anomaly
As noted above, new funds have allowed CIHR to expand the number of grants awarded. The high number of grants awarded in the March 2007 competition helps compensate for the low number awarded in the September 2006 competition, resulting in a combined total of 829 new grants over the two competitions. This number is consistent with previous years, as historically CIHR has awarded approximately 800 to 950 new grants a year, or 400 to 475 per competition.
Notably, roughly 50% of the new grants awarded in the March 2007 competition are in fact re-submissions of unfunded applications from the September 2006 competition. Were it not for financial constraints at the time, many of these projects would have been funded in September 2006 competition.
One-Year Grants
CIHR is committed to ensuring a solid base of research excellence. As part of CIHR's recent decisions on the allocation of new funding from Budget 2007, it was decided to earmark approximately $6.7M from the budget increase allocated to the OGP to fund one-year grants of up to $100,000. These grants will be awarded to unfunded applicants just below the cut-off for the 498 full-term grants.
The reason why CIHR chose to fund one-year grants instead of additional full-term grants is to balance our future commitments so as not to greatly reduce the amount of funds available in future years to invest in new grants. These additional one-year grants will be announced shortly.
The balance of full-term and one-year grants was carefully determined to ensure that investments made in the current competition leave sufficient funds available in future years to maintain a steady level of support.
Future Competitions
Moving forward, we expect to continue to be able to award between 800 and 900 new operating grants per year, or 400 to 450 per competition. This number is augmented by Institute Priority Announcements and other partnered funding programs that also award grants through the OGP, as well as one-year grants awarded by CIHR as a means of managing our multi-year investments.
It is important to note that although we can control the total investment in the OGP and the number of new grants awarded each year, we do not control the number of applications we receive and therefore cannot control the overall resultant success rate.
Pierre Chartrand, Ph.D.
Vice-President, Research Portfolio
