Lundbeck Foundation to cover universities’ indirect costs
As a result of the Lundbeck Foundation’s new grant strategy, the Foundation will cover all or part of universities’ project-related, indirect costs in the future.
The Foundation’s funding for research has been on the increase for some years, and when the volume of research increases so do the universities’ costs – administration expenses, operation of buildings, and so on.
It has been debated for some time whether Danish foundations should pay universities’ overheads, or at least some of their expenses. Foundations today have many different policies for covering overheads, but the Lundbeck Foundation recognises that universities accrue indirect costs due to grants from private foundations.
For this reason, one of the elements of our new grant strategy is to cover all or part of project-related, indirect costs that can be substantiated and/or documented.
In practical terms, this means that a flat rate will be applied to grants for less than DKK 10 million, whereas the rate will be negotiated for grants worth more than DKK 10 million. We do not cover indirect costs related to prizes, travel grants and research abroad, nor do we cover more than 10% of the total amount of the grant. Furthermore, our decision to cover all or part of project-related, indirect costs does not mean that we are increasing our total funding.
