Abstract

Our presentation will provide detailed insights into the current EU impact framework and how applicants’ efforts to present impact within proposals is being reviewed and commented on within ESR reports. Through in-depth analysis of multiple ESR’s, we present a taxonomy of reviewers’ indications towards successful articulation of impact within project proposal, and conversely the failure to do so. Finally, we provide some practitioner guidelines on how to promote impact within proposals and in so doing boost the chances of being successfully funded, whilst simultaneously improving the process of “impact by design” within the proposal development phase.
The presentation will end with a series of pre-prepared questions that will stimulate thoughts and questions from the audience. We will open these questions to the floor and the audience will be invited to respond to them or propose their own questions.
We propose to use a flip chart and coloured Post-It notes for our audience to use for a final task. On their way out of the session, each attendee will be asked to leave three coloured post-its on a blank flip chart. Each colour will indicate a rank of importance, using a traffic light system. We will ask them to number each of these post-its to indicate which of the pre-prepared questions is most important to them. Afterwards the presenters will conduct some analysis and ranking of the poll and as a learning objective will share the results with the attendees via the EARMA Impact collaboration space.
Take-aways: (i) that there is a broad correlation between reviewer comments and specific scores within ESR's; (ii) there are some good practices that everyone can adopt to improve impact within proposals but (iii) there are some emerging weaknesses in the impact framework that will need further attention.