Abstract

The topic of the poster is how pre-award services can support achieving the goals set for R&I funding and how these services are best allocated to different faculty members in universities of applied sciences (UAS).

Compared to traditional universities, at UAS the pre-award services typically aim to offer support for all proposal preparations. In practice, this is impossible due to limited personnel resources. As a result, the potential proposals need to be screened to determine how to best allocate resources. The poster will show how this screening is done and what kind of support services is available in the three Finnish UAS forming the strategic 3UAS alliance in the Helsinki capital region: Laurea UAS, Haaga-Helia UAS, and Metropolia UAS.

Pre-award services can include, for example, organizing funding instrument-related training, sparring the idea in accordance with a specific call, review of the application criteria, compiling the forms and attachments, building a consortium, assuring the quality of a proposal, commenting, and writing specific text sections. The poster argues that the type and extent of support should be decided based on the given funding instrument, the applicant’s experience and knowledge of the research funding, the applicant’s experience and knowledge of proposal preparation in general, and the strategic importance of the topic of the proposal for the organization as a whole. In addition, recent development work at pre-award services has brought out other important aspects in refining the proposal preparation process. For example, it is critical to develop a shared understanding of the internal objectives and the division of work between the pre-award services and the rest of the proposal preparation team.

Takeaway messages: Proposal preparation requires special expertise and attention to the specific features of each individual project idea. To achieve R&I funding goals, it is essential to ensure that the project preparation team has all the relevant expertise needed in proposal preparation and to clarify who is responsible for different tasks in the preparation work