You would think this. But actually institutes can be quite selective about what grants they take. (Usually the individual researcher would take whatever they ca

You would think this. But actually institutes can be quite selective about what grants they take. (Usually the individual researcher would take whatever they can get) The biggest example has to do with the NIH "indirect rate". The system, incredibly, is set up so that the larger a proportion of an institute's funding comes from NIH, the more money per grant goes to the institution. "Indirect" refers to the fact that each grant comes with "direct costs" that go to the scientist and "indirect costs" that goes to the institute, and the "indirect rate" determines the amount, expressed as a percentage of grant direct costs, that goes to the institute. This dumb system results in institutes discouraging their own investigators from applying for non-NIH grants. At my institute if you take a non-NIH grant you have to actually "pay back the difference" in lost funding for the institute that is caused by non-NIH grants lowering the institute's indirect rate.