Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An NIH R01 funded for 5 years with annual budget periods is a multi-year project.
- Is an instance
A Horizon Europe RIA running 4 years across 36-month periodic reports is a multi-year project.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A one-year seed grant is single-year, not multi-year.
- Not an instance
A short conference travel award of three months is not multi-year.
Editorial commentary
A multi-year project is a funded piece of research whose period of performance runs longer than a single year — most substantive research programmes, from an NIH R01 to a Horizon Europe collaborative project, are structured this way, because meaningful research generally cannot be planned, executed, and reported inside twelve months.
How multi-year funding is actually administered
A multi-year award is not released as one lump sum at the start. It is divided into successive budget periods — commonly annual, though Horizon Europe reporting cycles may run 12 or 18 months — and funding for each period after the first is released through a continuation award, contingent on the recipient submitting the required progress and financial report for the prior period. Each period boundary is fixed in the award terms, not chosen by the recipient.
Reporting and renewal across the life of the project
Because the project spans multiple budget periods, it moves in and out of a reporting period repeatedly before it ends, each producing its own progress or financial report. Once the full, originally approved project period is exhausted, continued support requires either a formally approved extension or, where the mechanism supports it, a competing renewal — a genuinely new competitive application, not a further continuation.
What differs from single-year administration
Multi-year projects carry planning and compliance obligations a single-year award does not: multi-year personnel commitments that must survive staff turnover, cost-share obligations that may accumulate or reset annually depending on the award terms, and a renewal-planning window that has to be tracked years in advance of the current project period’s end. See single-year project for the contrasting case, where none of this cross-period administration applies.
Also known as
Multi-annual project · Multi-year award · Long-duration grant
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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