Award frequently asked questions

Our Annual Funding Round usually opens at the beginning of October, and we may have other funding schemes open throughout the year. All currently open funding schemes will be listed on our Apply for a scheme page, alongside their opening and closing dates.

Over the last six years, we have had an average success rate of 21% with £10m available for funding each year.

Please read the Information for Applicants and Research Strategy. If you have any questions about your research and whether it would be suitable for our funding schemes, please email the Research Team at research@ycr.org.uk to assess whether your research fits within our aims and strategy.

We manage our Awards through our online system Flexi-Grant. When you are ready to apply for one of our funding schemes, you will need to create an account on Flexi-Grant to access the relevant scheme.

Currently we do not offer funding for PhD studentships as stand-alone projects. However, we can provide funding for students as part of a larger Research Award application.

Funding for travel and publications cannot be included within Research Awards and must be applied for separately using our Travel and Publication Costs Award application forms in Flexi-Grant. Only our Award Holders or staff associated with a Research or Endowment Award can apply for this funding.

The maximum amount that can be applied for is £2,000 for a Travel Award and £3,000 for a Publication Costs Award. We will prioritise applicants that have not applied for a Travel or Publication Costs Award within the last three years.

Applications to the Yorkshire Cancer Research Sheffield Pioneer Fund and More Life to Live Fund, should include reasonable publication and travel costs as part of the application. If you have any questions, please contact research@ycr.org.uk.

If you are withdrawing an application that has undergone any part of the Charity review process, you will need to inform the Charity and will need approval to resubmit the same application to subsequent rounds.

• If you think you already have a Flexi-Grant account but do not know or remember your password, select ‘Forgot password’ on the login page and enter your email address to reset your password.
• If your email address is not recognised, or you do not have a Flexi-Grant account, please register yourself as a new user.
• If you are still unable to access your Flexi-Grant account, email research@ycr.org.uk.

To update your email address, login to your Flexi-Grant account, go to ‘My account’, ‘Update my user account details’ and select the link ‘Change password’.

To update your contact details or CV, login to Flexi-Grant and go to ‘My account’. You will see the options ‘My contact details’ and ‘My CV’, where you can make changes to your contact details, consent preferences and CV information.

If your organisation is not listed as an option when you are completing your application form, please send an email to research@ycr.org.uk and we will be happy to add your organisation details to our system.

Please email research@ycr.org.uk for any help updating application forms that have been submitted.

A SoECAT (Schedule of Events Cost Attribution Template) will apply to all research applications that need to access the funding for Support and Excess Treatment Costs.

Further guidance and templates can be found on the NIHR website.

These are resources provided by the NIHR (Department of Health and Social Care) usually via the Local Clinical Research Networks. Examples of support costs are additional investigations, assessment and tests where the results are required by the patient care team.

These are NHS treatment costs funded by the NHS. Treatment costs in a research study can be greater than in routine care, for example, giving a patient a new drug to see how it compares to the standard drug given.

Once a full application is invited a SoECAT will need to be completed with the full application if the research incurs support costs and/or excess treatment costs as shown above. We encourage you to initiate this process with the NIHR as soon as possible to ensure this will be ready by the deadline date.

Only direct costs i.e. actual costs that are explicitly identifiable as arising from the conduct of a project (e.g. staff salaries, equipment, materials, travel) are valid.

Indirect costs will not be considered for funding in any application in accordance with AMRC guidelines on full economic costing.

Any cost increase due to inflation for salaries or consumables should be taken into account when preparing the budget.

All costs to a grant should be auditable. Your finance department from your organisation must be able to justify and account for all expenditure incurred.

Salaries costs can include:

• Salaries (only the staff time working on the Award is chargeable)
• Employer’s contributions e.g. NIC and pension costs (in proportion to the FTE working on the Award)

Salaries should not include:

• Members of staff not directly working on the Award e.g. central administration staff
• Those members of staff who are employed by the host organisation e.g. Principal Investigators
• Apprenticeship fees

Consumables costs can include:

• Laboratory costs, associated with the Award only
• Associated charges for shipping, delivery or freight
• Archive costs
• Printing/photocopying
• Equipment needed for the research only, this will include purchase, delivery, installation and maintenance, during the period of the funding
• Computers, usage must be solely for the Award
• Software
• Data Management
• Questionnaires and materials for the study
• Registration costs
• Volunteer expenses, patient involvement and community engagement
• Project specific travel and expenses

Any consumables items that are included in the project costings and have a value over £10,000 should be justified including backing information showing how the costings have been arrived at.

Consumables should not include:

• Fixed costs of the building e.g. premises, electricity, gas
• Computers or equipment for general use
• Depreciation
• Insurance
• Publication costs (unless stated otherwise in the Information for Applicants)
• Conference travel costs (unless stated otherwise in the Information for Applicants)

The lists above are not exhaustive and each Award is assessed individually. We may not fund items that are shown on the list if we deem them not to be a cost of the Award or inappropriate.

Any travel fares booked should be at the lowest cost possible in standard class. Individuals can upgrade to first class at their own expense but can only claim the standard fare for the journey.

Where possible, early bird registration for conferences is recommended.

We will accept reasonable accommodation and subsistence costs – for more information please review the guidance provided in the application form.

Before your Award can start, we must receive acceptance of the Award and the Award Terms and Conditions from the Award Holder(s) and their organisation’s Financial Authority. As soon as both acceptances have been received, we will activate the Award on our systems and be able to accept invoices.

If you are unable to start your Award within four months of the start date stated in your Award letter, you must let the Charity know immediately or your Award may be cancelled.

We will ask you to submit a request for an alternative start date via the Award Variation Form on Flexi-Grant, detailing the reasons behind the delay and your new proposed start date.

Your organisation should submit invoices to our Finance Team, accounts@ycr.org.uk, which will be paid in arrears.

The invoice should state the Award reference number and the start and end dates of the claim period. All salary claims should include the individuals’ names and FTE. We will only pay actual incurred costs against the Award and backing data must be provided alongside the invoice.

• Invoices for Research and Endowment Awards should be submitted quarterly.
• Invoices for Travel and Publication Awards can be attached to the Award application during the application process or sent to accounts@ycr.org.uk within three months of the Award approval letter date. You must ensure that your invoice (and therefore the amount you apply for) does not contain costs for VAT.

The Charity must be informed of all staff joining your Award in advance of any invoices claiming the new staff member’s costs. We also need to be informed when a staff member leaves your Award, and of any changes in Full Time Equivalent percentage.

Please submit a Staff Changes Form on Flexi-Grant when staff changes occur on your Award.

The Staff Changes Form can also be used to inform us of any unexpected periods of staff leave e.g. sickness or parental leave.

Please note: any discrepancies between staff members listed on invoices and the Staff Changes Forms you have submitted may result in delayed payment of the invoice.

Yes, the Award Holder will need to submit specific reports as requested by the Charity. Reports are usually completed annually, and you will be given at least one month’s notice that your next report(s) is due. Generally, you will have a virtual or face-to-face meeting with members of the Charity to discuss the content of your report(s).

Yes, the Award Holder can nominate individuals to submit monitoring reports on their behalf. The Award Holder can also nominate individuals to complete forms such as the Staff Changes Form and Award Variation Form.

Please email the Research Team, research@ycr.org.uk, with the individual’s details and we will be happy to set this up.

Yes, please go to our online Flexi-Grant system and fill in Research Output form where you will need to upload your materials. This includes patient information documents, campaign materials, and conference posters and presentations. The Charity must approve these documents before they can be used.

All marketing and public-facing communications associated with your Award must be branded according to guidance given at your Key Performance Indicator meetings.

• Please fill in the Research Output form available on the online Flexi-Grant system where you will be able to upload your materials.
• In any published work relating to your Award, you must acknowledge the Charity with the phrase ‘This work was funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research (Award reference number XXXX)’.
• All research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal must be made open access within six months of publication. As the Charity is a funder of Europe PubMed Central (Europe PMC), our Award Holders can deposit a copy of their manuscript in the Europe PMC repository at no cost.
• Funding is available to cover Publication Costs – please see the section ‘Can I apply for funding to cover travel and publication costs?’ for more information.

All research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and are supported in whole or in part by the Award should be made freely available within 6 months of publication. If the article is not added automatically by the publisher, it is the researcher’s responsibility to upload it. This applies to any publication resulting from the funded research, both during and after the period of funding.

Yorkshire Cancer Research is a funder of Europe PubMed Central, as such there are no additional costs for Award holders depositing a manuscript in the Europe PMC repository to meet the above criteria. Find out more about how to deposit your publication (Europe PMC).

The Charity encourages the use of the CC-BY license for all journal publications. Where an open access fee has been paid to a journal the author of the manuscript must apply a CC-BY licence and the following phrase shall be inserted into the manuscript “For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission”.

Read more information on CC-BY licences here.