About us

The Swedish Foundations’ Starting Grant (SFSG) is a collaboration between seven private funders: Erling-Perssons stiftelse, Kempestiftelserna, KK-stiftelsen, Olle Engkvist Stiftelse, Ragnar Söderbergs stiftelse, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Svenska Sällskapet för Medicinsk Forskning. 

Our aim

The initiative was launched in 2015 to support early-career researchers with excellent project proposals, so that they would be in a more favorable position next time they applied to the European Research Council (ERC). Relative to other comparable countries, researchers in Sweden receive fewer ERC grants and our long-term goal is to change this.

By providing an additional opportunity for funding of top scoring (’A’) ERC applications we hope to motivate more researchers to invest the necessary time and effort of writing such an application, thereby increasing the overall number of researchers in Sweden who apply for – and receive – ERC Starting Grants. More ERC funding for research in Sweden is beneficial both for individual researchers and the country.

A unique initiative

There are several initiatives across Europe were public funders provide additional funding for top-scoring ERC-applications (e.g. in Sweden the Swedish Research council will fund applicants on the ERC reserve list) and in 2022 private foundation in France launched an initiative aimed at life sciences. However, the SFSG-initiative is unique in Europe in the sense that a group of private funders have joined forces to support high-quality applications across all disciplines.

In addition to funding of projects, we also fund supporting activities such as workshops for ERC-applicants and raise awareness through dialogue with universities and other stakeholders.