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Selecting our investments
Transition funding

Transition funding provides a way for the Foundation? to work with major research organisations to manage the impacts of decisions to not fund a team in an area where they have previously received funding.

Foundation policy specifies clear triggers and criteria for the use of transition funding. These are:

  • Formal transition funding will be negotiated with a research organisation whose net funding in an annual investment round is reduced by the greater of $1 million per year or five percent of the organisation’s total existing Foundation funding, after allowing for expected funding gains from research consortia or other conditional investments already under negotiation.

    Note: In this context, ‘annual investment round’ refers to the investment processes across the Public Good, Science and Technology and New Economy Research Funds in any one year.
  • Negotiation of transition funding will be considered with a single research team when it has a funding reduction of $500,000 per year.
  • Separate teams within a research organisation may be substantially affected, but the net funding change for that organisation does not exceed the threshold as described above. In this situation, the organisation may negotiate reasonable funding offsets between programmes that are being increased and those that are being reduced for a period of up to one year.
  • Transition funding arrangements should suit the needs of each case.
  • The criteria incorporated in determining transition funding arrangements should consider avoiding or minimising:
    • The loss of strategically significant human capital and/or research capability to New Zealand.
    • Failure to complete work that is an essential input into other ongoing work.
    • The loss of potential benefits to New Zealand that could readily be realised from investments in programmes where funding is to be terminated.
    • Adverse impacts on the ability or willingness of private or public sector co-funding partners to continue to invest in research, science and technology.