Grant payment and reporting

Grant Commitment and Payment

The grant confirmation, sent by email, includes the necessary details to complete the commitment in the grant system. For personal grants, a Finnish personal identity code and a SEPA bank account are required. For organizational grants, the organization’s Business ID (Y-tunnus) is used for the payment process. A grant is considered cancelled if the payment has not been initiated within three years from the date of the confirmation email.

The grant commitment and payment plan must be completed in the grant system by the 20th day of the month. The payment plan must align with the grant period specified in the decision (4–12 months for individuals, 12–36 months for research groups) and the progress of the project.

Payment Instalments

A full-time (12-month) personal working grant is typically paid in 5–7 instalments, but the number and size of monthly instalments may vary. When drafting the payment plan, note that an individual monthly instalment of the working grant cannot exceed €7,000. Payment instalments for research visits may, upon the recipient’s submitted clarifications in the payment request, deviate from the maximum amount. If no duration is specified in the decision, it is a project grant, usually paid in a single instalment.

Payment schedule

Grants are paid according to the payment plan submitted by the recipient. If the plan is incomplete, the desired payment schedule cannot be implemented.

Grants are paid by the last business day of each month.

Exceptions:

• July: No grant payments are made; the July instalment can be requested together with the June instalment.
• December: An earlier deadline may apply due to Christmas holidays (in 2025, no exception; the deadline is 20 December 2025).

The payment of a working grant can be temporarily suspended, for instance, if the recipient begins fixed-term full-time employment or takes parental leave. Notify changes to apurahat@lsr.fi and contact Mela for practical matters related to the temporary suspension (www.mela.fi).

Minor adjustments to the payment schedule can be processed during the grant period based on a valid explanation provided by 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