Impact Round 2025

The instructions in the calls for proposals state:

"For the Budget justification section, prepare a separate document that provides a breakdown of each category and a detailed justification for spending in each category. Provide sufficient information to allow reviewers to assess whether the resources requested are appropriate."

The in-template fillable response section is for partnership contributions only.

If you have already written the budget justification into the template, you can simply copy and paste it into a new document. No new content needs to be written. The budget justification document should be a maximum of 2 pages. 

You do not need to include Research Trainees in the Budget Justification. 

If your team needs to hire Research Assistants (students who are not part of the Volt-Age Cohort), then you would need to:

a) include their salaries (including non-discretionary benefits) in the Compensation section of the Budget Grid

b) justify why they are needed in the Budget Justification section. 

Academic collaborators should be listed ONLY in the "Partnerships" section of the application. They should not be listed under "Team."

Risk Assessment and Mitigation Plan with private sector partners are not required at the time of submission. However, these documents must be submitted with all MOUs and Reciprocity Agreements within the first year of a project being accepted in order to ensure that full funds are released.

MoUs with both Impact project and Living Lab project partners can be submitted within the first year after being awarded the grant. Partners with whom an MoU has not been signed prior to submitting the application must submit a Letter of Support and must indicate in that letter that they commit to finalizing and signing an MoU in this time frame.

Please include NSERC or SSHRC formatted CVs (eg. CCV - full Form 100A not required) with your application for the Principal Investigator and all co-Applicant Investigators. If you do not currently have a CCV or other NSERC/SSHRC formatted CV, please include a 2-page summary CV focussing on work relating to your contribution to the project. 

Only CVs for the Principal Investigator and Co-Applicant Investigators should be included in your proposal.

Yes. The indirect cost overhead only applies to private sector partners. If you are inputting a non private-sector partner, delete the overhead formula. 

Yes. As per the Appendix in the Impact Calls:

In the case of projects with a Principal Investigator or Co-Applicant Investigator at a partner university, the allotted funds will be transferred to the partner institution to then be distributed to the applicants accordingly.

Allotted funds for researchers at partner institutions are INCLUDED in the maximum budget request from Volt-Age ($4 million for Impact Projects; $1.5 million for Living Labs). This includes budget amounts for research activities and resources as well as students they will supervise.

If there is a conflicting statement or rule between a call for proposals and the corresponding budget grid template, the rule or statement in the call for proposals supersedes and applies. 

Yes. The research trainee salaries have been purposefully separated from research budget for both the Living Labs and Impact Project budget grids. The research trainee amounts only appear on the research trainee tab.

The TOTAL ask you can make to Volt-Age is up to $4 million for Impact Projects and up to $1.5 million for Living Labs. Those amounts, as specified in the calls, include the research trainee amounts, which need to be a minimum of 80% of the total amount requested from Volt-Age for Impact Projects or a minimum of 40% of the total amount requested from Volt-Age for Living Labs.

The percentage (80% for Impact Projects; 40% for Living Labs) of your request for research trainee amounts is represented on the Research Trainees sheet in the budget grid. The research budget sheet in the budget grid is for everything that is NOT research trainee amounts. In other words, this is for the remaining 20% of your ask for Impact Projects or the remaining 60% of your ask for Living Labs. The sum of what is included on the Research trainees sheet and the research budget sheet must be no more than $4 million for Impact Projects or $1.5 million for Living Labs.

The amount you have to request from Volt-Age for the Research Budget (i.e. all allowable expenses other than research trainee salaries) equals the total amount you are requesting minus the research trainee salaries total, ensuring that the minimums are respected. 

As all of the contributions listed in the budget grid need to be confirmed through the Letters of Support, please ignore this column. 

No. The templates, for either Impact Projects or Living Labs, must be used for completing all applications. 

Yes. Each section of the form that is fillable has a character limit enforced equivalent to the standard number of characters per page. The character limit is equivalent to the listed page limits for each response. The character limit is 3,000 characters per page. So, for example, if the limit is 3 pages, the character limit is 9,000. 

Note: Please make sure that you are using the Word template to complete your application to ensure that your responses fit within the set limits for each section.

In the Research Plan section are you able to do styling.

In the rest of the template, you are not. Bolding, Italics, underline, etc. are not available. In order to ensure that page/character limits are respected across all of the applications, the Word document was created as a form, which limits the ability to use styling. 

Please use uppercase letters and dashes if necessary to separate sections and create lists. 

You are able to add charts, tables, and figures into your response for the Research Plan. That is the only place that you are able to do so. They do count towards your page limit. 

If existing doctoral students are to be transferred exclusively, they must not have completed more than one year of their program and their existing project must have ended, or they were already recruited through a seed funding project. For existing students, include names, program, duration in program and justification for transfer to Volt-Age projects. Note that existing students will be funded by Volt-Age scholarships for the remaining of their study up to year four. Overall, new students should constitute more than 80% of the recruited research trainees as part of the project.

For Impact Projects, each project should recruit a minimum of 2 x number of applicants new doctoral students (e.g. a small team of 6 researchers should recruit a minimum total of 12 doctoral students whereas a larger team of 10 should recruit a minimum total of 20 students). Note that the distribution of students among the team can vary as long as the total minimum is respected.  

For Living Lab applicants, each project should recruit a minimum of 1 x number of applicants new doctoral students (e.g. a small team of 4 researchers should recruit a minimum total of 4 doctoral students). Note that the distribution of students among the team can vary as long as the total minimum is respected.  

The listed research trainee salaries are the minimum required salaries. You are at full liberty to offer higher including from the Volt-Age grant itself or from other sources at your university or elsewhere.

Note: The Research Trainee salaries in the budget grids are set to the amounts that Volt-Age will provide per student. Any additional monies offered to students from the Volt-Age grant itself will come out of the remaining amount that you can request from Volt-Age and thus should be included in the Research Budget sheet. 

For Impact Projects, a minimum of 80% of the total money requested from Volt-Age must go towards Research Trainee salaries. This means that if you are requesting the full $4 million from Volt-Age for your project, you must allot a minimum of $3.2 million to Research Trainee salaries. 

For Living Labs, a minimum of 40$ of the total money requested from Volt-Age must go towards Research Trainee salaries. This means that if you are requesting the full $1.5 million, you must allot a minimum of $600,000 to Research Trainee salaries.

Yes. All PhD students in the Volt-Age Cohort are offered the same fellowship amount, which is for 4 years. The 4-year fellowship term is what is used when calculating research trainee budgets, even for 3-year projects. 

Note: Exceptionally, existing students who qualify to work on Impact Round projects will only be offered a fellowship for the remainder of their studies up 4 years. 

No, there is no limit on external or non-academic partners for your project. 

On top of the partners that you list in your proposal that you know will be working with you on your project, we have allowed for partnerships to evolve. The proposal templates state the following:

"Projects may evolve over time, with up to five external partners, including Indigenous communities, joining within the first year."

Research trainees include: masters students, PhD students, and postdocs. These are members of the Volt-Age Cohort and will be paid directly from Volt-Age.

HQPs include: Research technicians, research associates, and other technical or research personnel

An Early Career Researcher is someone who is within 5 years of their first academic appointment. 

Diverse fields of study means that researchers are in different departments. 

Yes. Up to 2 Co-Applicant Investigators can be from collaborating instutions for Impact Project Proposals. However, collaborating instutions cannot receive funding from the Impact Round.

Principal Investigators and Co-Applicant Investigators should mainly be from Concordia and partner institutions (University of Calgary, Dalhousie University, Toronto Metropolitan University). Up to 2 Co-Applicant Investigators can be from institutional collaborators (Carleton University, University of Windsor, ETS, Polytechnique Montreal, Université de Montreal), however institutional collaborators cannot receive any funding from the Impact Round. Researchers from all other institutions are eligible to be academic collaborators on Impact Projects.

Yes! We welcome applications from individuals who are not currently part of the Volt-Age community. The Impact Round applications will be evaluated on their merit for this round of funding only. There is no link between the Seed Grant and Impact Round calls for proposals in terms of eligibility or funding opportunity.