Grant payment and reporting

GRANT COMMITMENT

The grant confirmation letter is sent by email, and it includes the information needed to fill out the obligatory grant commitment in the grant system. NOTE! This applies both the new grant recipients and those recipients from previous grant rounds who have not yet initiated their grant period.

A grant is considered withdrawn if the commitment form is not submitted within three years from the date of the grant confirmation letter.

 

GRANT PAYMENT

Payment schedule

A grant is paid according to the recipient’s schedule presented in the grant commitment. A Finnish bank account is required for the payments. If the commitment form is inadequately filled it is not possible to realize its requested payment schedule.

The commitment forms and payment requests submitted by the 20th of the month are valid for the month’s payments. Grants will be paid by the last working day of each month.

Exceptions are

  • July, when there is no grant payment / payment will be made in June
  • December, when due to the Christmas holidays, payment requests must be submitted by December 18th (2022).

Payment sums

The payment plan follows the grant period announced in the decision (4–12 months, research group 12–36 months) and the implementation of the project. A full-time (12-month) personal working grant is typically paid in 5–7 installments, but the amounts and sizes of the monthly installments vary. When preparing the plan, it is important to note that in processing requests concerning working grants, no more than EUR 7 000 is accepted as a monthly portion. If the decision does not specify the length of the period, the grant is a target grant, and the payment is usually in one installment.

If the grant recipient’s circumstances change substantially from those presented in the application, e.g. if the grantee goes into full time paid employment, please contact our office. Payment of the grant may be discontinued or the payment schedule changed. Smaller changes to the payment schedule may be conducted upon request by emailing a valid explanation to the email: apurahat@lsr.fi.

Statutory obligations

Mela (The Farmers’ Social Insurance Institution responsible for grant recipients) requires a statutory Myel insurance of those receiving a working grant for a minimum of four months. See Mela’s website for more information. The Foundation for Economic Education reports of awarded grants to Mela within the first payment month. The grantee needs to make the application to Mela him/herself. The awarded grant includes the portion subject to insurance.

Grants awarded by the Foundation for Economic Education include the eventual costs incurred in working.  For groups, a requisite for the eventual use of complementary workforce is that the person in charge of the group takes care of the application for the statutory social security.

Grants are tax-exempt to their recipients up to the amount equivalent to the Finnish state grants for artists as annually confirmed. Beginning from March 1, 2024 the maximum amount is €26,355.60 / year.

According to the Finnish income tax law (Tuloverolaki 1535/92, 82§) the stipendiums and other grants for education or research, or prizes for meritorious scientific, artistic, or non-profit activity, are with certain conditions subject to taxation.

Conference grants

A grant awarded for conference participation will be made payable only after it has been confirmed that the researcher’s paper has been accepted for presentation.

Grants awarded for studies abroad

Grants awarded for postgraduate or complementary studies abroad will be made payable two months before travelling at the earliest.

Grants for entities

Grants awarded to teams or entities (e.g. schools and associations) will be paid only to the entity’s bank account. A business identity code (Y-tunnus) is needed for the payments.

Grants for research groups

The research group head distributes the group grant to the team members when making the payment request. If this is not possible, we will require a plan signed by the research team leader on how the scholarship will be distributed among the different researchers. There is no tax-free grant for the research group’s additional staff.

Of the grant received by the research group, only the common costs of the group can be paid to the university or other responsible organization (Business ID) by the decision of the person in charge of the project.

A precondition for grant payments is a commitment form with an original signature. A fax or an email attachment will not suffice.

REPORTING ON THE USE OF GRANT

The grantee must prepare a final report at the end of the funding period. The report is submitted in the grant system by the designated grant recipient. Instructions and the link to the grant system are the same as in the payment request. If your doctoral dissertation or research report have a permanent web address, include it in your report.

The Fund welcomes dissertations posted to the foundation’s office delivery address: Museokatu 8 A 1, 00100 Helsinki.

The report is, in principle, public information on a project supported by the The Foundation for Economic Education. It is good practice to mention the funder, for example, in the Foreword of the publication as well as in other publications related to the project.

The objectives of reporting on awarded grants are:

(1) To make sure that the grant recipient uses the grant for the purpose mentioned in his/her application. This is important for the Foundation for Economic Education’s decision making, as well as for ensuring the fair treatment of other grant applicants.

(2) To collect summaries of reports that interest the Foundation’s stakeholders to show that economic education is worth investing in.

(3) To get publications completed with our funding to the Foundation for Economic Education’s library when they are still recent but already in their finalized form.

(4) To time the grant payments according to need.

A report on the total costs of the project and on how the costs have been covered is essential. The main point, however, is to report on what has been achieved with the grant. The significance of personal learning and experiences should not be underrated when doing this, even though grants are not awarded merely for gaining experiences. If the grant recipient has been on leave of absence or on study leave and has financed this through the grant, an accurate account of this is required.

If it is not possible to deliver the final report because the project continues or due to postponing it, an intermediate report on the work’s progress/continuation is required within two years of awarding the grant. After this we expect to get a report once a year, until the project is completed.

For further information, please contact: apurahat(at)lsr.fi