Home Grants For grant recipients Funding practicalities Funding practicalities On this page, you can find general information and advice about using your funding, making payment requests, social security, and taxation and reporting. GrantsFor grant applicants Criteria for applying Kone Foundation’s focuses in awarding grants Guidelines for making an application Evaluation and decisions Frequently asked questions Propose a peer reviewer For grant recipients Funding practicalities Fair practices in funded projects Grants+ Project communications Instructions for At the Well blog Instructions for project pages Kamari booking calender Funding programmes and thematic grant calls Funding programme: Is Democracy Eroding? (2021–2025) Thematic grant call 2025: Securitization and Democracy Thematic grant call 2024: Media and Democracy in Finland in the 2020s Thematic grant call 2022: The current state and challenges of Finnish democracy Thematic grant call 2021: Language, Power and Democracy Previous thematic grant calls Vuoden Tiedekynä Academic Writing Award Using the grant General payment guidelines Making a payment request Changes to the project Suspension of payments, breaks in the payment schedule and grant cancellation Social security and insurance payments Taxation Certificate on the funding Reporting Using the grant If you intend to accept the funding, you do not need to inform Kone Foundation, but if you choose not to accept the funding, please contact us as soon as possible. The funding must be used according to the following time frames: one-year funding must be used within three years of awarding two-year funding within four years three-year funding within five years four-year funding within six years The period in which the funding must be used can be extended if the payments have been deferred due to parental leave, military service, to care for a child below three years of age, or sick leave. Please contact the Foundation office if you wish to extend the funding period. General payment guidelines Kone Foundation grants are paid out monthly by the third working day of the month. Payments may also be made to bank accounts outside Finland and the SEPA region. Payments made to foreign bank accounts might take longer. The personal monthly grants are paid directly to the project member’s personal account. The grants are paid when the work that the grant has been intended for takes place. A full monthly grant is paid out only when the grantee works in the project full-time, not up front or after the work has ended. Find the payment schedule for the year 2026 here. Details regarding awarded grants and instructions for how to submit a payment request are available on the online service. To access the payment request page, log in to the online service and enter the identification code for payment requests included in your letter of approval. Making a payment request The grant is paid on the basis of a payment request submitted by the 10th day of the month preceding the month of payment. Payment requests for organisations and working groups must be submitted by the person responsible for the project. Please create a payment schedule for the entire duration of the project at once, if possible. Should any changes regarding your payment schedule occur, you can edit a request that has already been confirmed. Fill in the payment schedule for monthly grants and possible other expenses. Funding for other expenses is primarily paid in one instalment per year, in which case it can be used throughout the year. Other costs are preferably paid into a bank account of a legal entity with a business ID. Funding for expenses paid to a university account can be disbursed in full at once (such as in the case of multi-year projects). If any salary or remuneration is issued from other expenses, the person responsible for the project must comply with all employer obligations, statutory payments and tax requirements. Kone Foundation only covers the other expenses and cannot assist with practical administrative matters. For more information about the payment of salaries and related matters, please visit Palkka.fi (in Finnish and Swedish). Do you need help filling in the payment request? Watch an instructional video here. Please note that any changes to personal grant payment schedule may affect the grantee’s MYEL insurance coverage. Grantees are obligated to immediately inform MELA about any changes regarding grant payments. Please be aware that the Kone Foundation office is closed every July and new payment requests will not be processed. All instalments confirmed to be paid will be issued as agreed. Changes to the project The funding should primarily be used for the purpose for which it was awarded. If the concept of the project, composition of the working group, working percentage or any other key element changes, the person responsible for the project must submit a change request via the online service. Please explain your reasoning on the change request form: What has changed after the grant decision and why? The request for change will be processed within approximately one month of receiving it. If the project proposal included an anonymous grantee/grantees, the person responsible for the project must also submit a change request to confirm the identity of these grantees. Please attach the CV for any new grantee on the “Change request” page. A payment request for this grantee can only be submitted after the change request has been confirmed. Smaller grants (25%, 50% or 75% of full grant) are available for part-time work. For changes to the work amount, the person responsible for the project must send the change request. For changes to your project’s timetable, it is usually enough to submit a new payment request. Do you need help filling in the change request? Please see an instructional video. It is important to note that grantees themselves must contact MELA regarding possible changes to their grants. We recommend that before making any changes, grant recipients inquire from MELA how these changes will affect their insurance coverage and, in particular, the insurance period. Suspension of payments, breaks in the payment schedule and grant cancellation If you receive other funding or begin work in a salaried position, that will affect your Kone Foundation grant; please inform us immediately. You must also inform us of any military service, parental leave to look after children under 3 years of age or sick leave. For the majority of such cases, the grant will be suspended and issued later. If a grantee with MYEL insurance goes on sick leave, they may be eligible for a MELA’s sickness allowance. Payment of the grant must be suspended during sick leave. Further details can be obtained from MELA. It is permitted to work up to 25% in other employment alongside a full-time grant. Recipients of an annual grant are entitled to take approximately one month of leave per year without suspension of grant payments. If the grant is not used according to the terms of the grant, any funds not yet received may be cancelled and funds already received may be claimed for recovery. A grant that has not been used within the time period specified above is considered cancelled. The recipient will not be notified of the cancellation. Social security and insurance payments The Farmers’ Social Insurance Institution (Maatalousyrittäjien eläkelaitos, MELA) provides pension, accident, and group life insurance coverage for grant recipients in Finland. Statutory insurance payments are approximately 15–20% of the monthly grant. Kone Foundation will inform MELA of individuals or groups who have received funding for periods of four months or more and whose grants exceed the minimum level for pension payments (€4 712 in earnings per year in 2026). It is the grantees’ responsibility to contact MELA to arrange pension coverage. Kone Foundation has not limited the amount of expenses of the personal monthly grant. You may deduct expenses of your personal monthly grant according to MELA’s guidelines. MELA notifies the tax authorities directly of grant recipients’ pension payments. It is important to note that grant recipients themselves must contact MELA regarding possible changes to their grants. We recommend that grant recipients, before making changes to payment schedules, inquire from MELA how these changes will affect their insurance coverage and, in particular, the length of the insurance period. If a grantee with MYEL insurance goes on sick leave, they may be eligible for a Mela sickness allowance. Payment of the grant must be suspended during sick leave. Further information on social security for grant recipients can be obtained from MELA. The material from the MELA info session held on 10 February 2025 is available here. Taxation Grants are tax-exempt in Finland up to the amount equivalent to the Finnish state grants for artists (€26.988,24 per year from 1.7.2025 onwards). Please note that all full annual grants awarded by Kone Foundation exceed this limit. Kone Foundation is not the employer for its grant recipients and the personal monthly grant is not a salary. Therefore, Kone Foundation grantees do not send a tax deduction card to the Foundation. The Foundation does not deduct any taxes from the grants, even when the amount of funding already paid to the recipient (within the same calendar year) exceeds the maximum tax-exempt amount. Kone Foundation is not liable for Value Added Tax, and the Foundation does not have a VAT number. Kone Foundation notifies the Finnish tax authorities in January of the grants paid out during the previous year. The grant recipient must report the grant in their tax declaration. Please consult the tax administration on the deductibility of expenses such as pension payments, books and materials, and travel expenses. Taxation of funding for expenses for individual or working group without Finnish business ID Kone Foundation reports annually the payments made for the funding of expenses in grant projects when the applicant is an individual or a working group represented by the person responsible for the project. In these cases, the funding for expenses will be listed under the person responsible for the project and will be visible in their pre-completed tax return. The person responsible for the project must then explain the funding for expenses online in MyTax (OmaVero). Further information about taxation matters regarding grants Finnish Tax Administration Certificate on the funding In most cases, the funding approval letter serves as a valid certificate that proves you have been awarded a Kone Foundation grant. If the grantee requires proof of payment of the grant, the person responsible for the project can download a certificate in PDF format from the online service on the “Payment request” page for each grantee (Account info > small PDF icon below “Monthly grant recipient”). Reporting Progress report Grantees who have been awarded funding for a multiyear project must submit an annual progress report on the online service. The progress report must be submitted within a month of the end of each year of funding. The reporting period runs from the start of the grant payment, not the start of the calendar year. Without a progress report, payments cannot be continued. The person responsible for the project is in charge for the reporting of the organisations and working groups. From the perspective of the Foundation, progress reports primarily serve as means for us to communicate with the grantee or project’s working group and to track its progress. In addition, through progress reporting we aim to encourage grantees to make their work visible. However, the Foundation does not require its grantees to communicate about their projects. Read more about project communications here. The report should not be mailed to the Foundation, and it can not include receipts or other attachments. Final report All grantees must provide a final report (submitted via the online service) for their project within six months of the last grant payment. If the funding consists of funding for other expenses only, please provide the final report within eighteen months of the last payment. The person responsible for the project is in charge of reporting for organisations and working groups. By reporting, you let the funder know that the funding was used for the purposes for which it was awarded. This is important in ensuring fair treatment of grant applicants and recipients. Reports also provide us with key information about the impact of funding and can be used to develop the Kone Foundation funding system. The questions for the final report can be found on the reporting form on the online service. In addition to the final report, we ask that literary grantees send a copy of any works that are eventually published to the Kone Foundation. Please send the copy to Kone Foundation’s Posti Parcel Locker. A final report must be provided even if the funded project is only partially or not at all completed. Neglecting to submit a final report risks a negative decision for future funding. We may also seek to reclaim the funding. The report should not be mailed or emailed to the Foundation, and it can not include receipts or other attachments. The Foundation processes the reports confidentially. The contents of the reports can be used anonymously to improve the position of grantees and to develop services.