Who can apply and for what purpose?

Finnish citizens and citizens of other countries who live in Finland can apply for grants for the purpose of work performed predominantly in Finland. Only private individuals can apply for grants.

The Foundation awards individual working grants for doctoral dissertation finalization, early phase postdoc researchers, and for research visits related to the above. You can apply for a grant for your doctoral dissertation if the remaining work will not take longer than one year. You can apply for postdoctoral research grants if you defended your dissertation no more than three years ago.

The grant is intended for full-time work, performed during the calendar year that follows the year the grant was awarded. Grants are not awarded retrospectively. Grant work/project may not begin before the December of the year the grant was awarded. Grants are to be used within two years of the date when they were awarded. The usage period is calculated from the date the grant was awarded.

Grant criteria

The purpose of the Alfred Kordelin Foundation is to promote and support Finnish science, literature, arts, and public education. Applicants may receive grants if they, based on prior established work, are in a position to implement the plan that they have proposed. When evaluating grant applications, our experts pay attention to the significance of the topic as well as the quality, contents, schedule, and feasibility of the research plan. Moreover, the applicant’s activeness in the scientific field is taken into consideration, with things such as publications that are not related to the Ph.D. work and participation in international congresses taken into account.

Grant applications are evaluated and funding decisions made on the basis of the following issues:

• Project originality
• Feasibility of the implementation plan
• Earlier merits of the applicant
• Significance of the project. The applicant has considered how the project will advance their own professional capabilities and the field in general.

Duration and size of the grant

In most cases, grants have a duration of 12 or 6 months.

Working grants are intended for the continuous, full-time work of private individuals during a certain period of time.  Grants are not awarded for part-time work. The sizes of a working grant are approximately €2,166 per month (dissertations) and €2,500 per month (postdoc research).

You can include expenses such as material expenses, assistant expenses and purchased services into your work.  Mela, the insurer of grant recipients, will accept that expenses account for max. half of the received grant. The grant covers employment pension insurance, occupational accident insurance, and group life insurance.

If the grantee uses the expense grant to hire labor, he him-/herself is responsible for the usual employer obligations, such as withholding taxes (assistant expenses). Tax regulations may change, and their interpretation may differ to some extent. The Alfred Kordelin Foundation therefore cannot take responsibility for the correctness of this information. For more information, please contact directly vero.fi.

Grants are not awarded for expenses alone. Please note that total work + expenses cannot exceed the maximum amounts listed below.

Grants

• An individual 12-month working grant of €26,000 for finalizing a Ph.D.
• An individual six-month working grant of €13,000 for finalizing a Ph.D.
• An individual 12-month working grant of €30,000 for postdoc researchers just starting out.
• An individual six-month working grant of €15,000 for postdoc researchers just starting out.
• An individual grant can also be of the sum and duration defined by the applicant themselves.

Which field?

You can direct your application to one field of science. When drawing up your application, you must select the field whose experts you wish to evaluate your application. If your application is multidisciplinary, choose the field you yourself think best fits your project, or which best represents your application.

Applying for a grant

The application period is from 1 to 15 August 2022. The application period begins and ends at midnight Finnish time. Grants are applied via the Foundation’s online grant service. Grant applications can be created and sent in the grant online service only during the application period.

Make sure that you have submitted a statement of use for a previously received grant before applying for a new grant.

Net banking identification is required for grant applications. The application and its appendices must be delivered to the online service within the application period. Statements, diplomas, and dissertation defense permits can be delivered up until a certain date the statement service and to the online grant service. The Foundation will not accept incomplete or late applications or their appendices.

Appendices

At least the mandatory appendices must be attached to applications. Some of the information and appendices requested for an application are mandatory. If the application is incomplete, the service will prevent it from being sent until the missing information has been added.

Guidelines for drawing up and delivering appendices

• All appendices must be in pdf format, and they must be sent via the grant online service as individual files.
• The maximum size of an appendix is 3 MB.
• Name the appendices in a way that describes their contents and avoid special characters.
• The length of a working plan must not exceed five (5) pages.
• Contact your supervisor in good time, and ask them to deliver a statement via the statement service.
• Diplomas here equal a master’s diploma (for dissertation applications) or a Ph.D. diploma (for postdoc research).

Deadlines for appendices

• 15 August 2022 CV, working plan, list of publications and invitation (invitation in case of research visit)
• 22 August 2022 supervisor statements on the progress of the work, diplomas, and permits to defend a dissertation to the application service.

Doctoral dissertations

• CV (mandatory)
• Work plan (mandatory)
• Publication list (mandatory)
• Progress statement (mandatory, request your supervisor to deliver this to the statement service)
• Diploma (mandatory)

Post-doc research

• CV (mandatory)
• Work plan (mandatory)
• Publication list (mandatory)
• Progress statement (mandatory, request the person making the statement to deliver it to the statement service).
• Diploma or permission to defend dissertation if the Ph.D. diploma is not yet available at the time of the application (mandatory).

Research visits

• CV (mandatory)
• Work plan (mandatory)
• Publication list (mandatory)
• Diploma (mandatory)
• Invitation (mandatory)

Decisions

The decisions on awarded grants are made by the Board of Directors of the Alfred Kordelin Foundation in August. All applicants will receive information on the decisions via email.