Research Support Fund: 2026 - 2027

About the Research Support Fund Program (RSF): Individual research awards cover the direct costs of research, but research institutions bear the costs of supporting their overall research activity. The RSF assists Canadian postsecondary institutions and their affiliated research hospitals and institutes with the expenses associated with managing the research funded by the three federal research granting agencies:

• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR);
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC); and
• Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).

These costs are called the indirect costs of research, defined as the operational costs that underpin an institution’s research activities (i.e., heating, lighting, ethics reviews, facilities for animals used in research, management of intellectual property, environmental assessment and safety compliance). The services that give rise to indirect costs are institutionally based and are not specific to individual research grants.

Eligible institutions receive an annual grant through the fund to help pay for a portion of the central and departmental administrative costs related to federally funded research.

Affiliated Organizations: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives- Manitoba

What costs does the program support?

• research facilities
• research resources
• management and administration of the institution's research enterprise
• regulatory requirements and accreditation
• intellectual property and knowledge mobilization
• research security

Examples of RSF Investment at UW

Research management software: Federal research support funding helps us maintain and sustain our research management software, ensuring it continues to serve researchers effectively. This also involves evaluating this current infrastructure and investigating new functionalities.

Library: The Library supports researchers in many ways, including educating researchers on Open Access practices and maintaining Open Access infrastructure, including Erudit/Coalition Publi.ca, Scoap3 and our Institutional Repository, WinnSpace. Federal research support funding helps sustain these investments, ensuring the UW community continues to have access to trustworthy and respected open access resources and the infrastructure that supports them.

Staff: As the University's research funding has grown significantly over the past decade, federal research support funding helps sustain the staff needed to support this activity. This includes staff supporting research-related infrastructure projects, new staff in Research Accounting, a Research Office administrative assistant, and staff dedicated to research program development with a focus on equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization practices.

Research Security: Enhancing institutional services related to research security will strengthen the University of Winnipeg's research security infrastructure by finalizing and publishing practical guidance materials, designing a formal partner due diligence screening framework, completing priority technology upgrades, and delivering a sustained staff training program.

Objectives for 2026-2027 RSF Grant