Abstract

The funding world is a jungle of possibilities: top-down and bottom-up, RIAs, IAs and CSAs – guiding researchers to suitable funding is no easy task! RMAs across Europe engage in “awareness raising” activities to this end, but face issues from busy researchers and knowledge bottlenecks to resource squeezes. While some solutions to these problems exist, there is no consensus on best practices RMAs can use to connect their researchers to appropriate funding opportunities.

This poster aims to open a conversation about how the RMAs of EARMA have tackled these problems and what we can learn from one another. To kickstart the discussion, we outline a range of best practices and new automated tools developed at the Danish Technological Institute. As Denmark’s most successful applied research institute in Horizon Europe, we’ve seen our success rates soar in recent years – in part, we contend, thanks to our awareness-raising “Outreach” program.

In this continuous programme, we run a structured series of information-gathering meetings, analysis work, and targeted follow-up sessions in which we map the interests and capabilities of scientists in our 30+ technical departments, and match them with appropriate funding opportunities. To prevent these discussions becoming disjointed, we support the program with an in-house “Horizon Network”, and have developed an opportunity-tracking tool that allows our researchers to “hop on” to other departments’ proposals early in the pre-award phase. This has bolstered transparency and interdisciplinary collaboration in response to institutional mandates and the demands of funding bodies. We’ve found that such targeted investment during the awareness-raising phase of pre-award work pays dividends in the long run.

Our poster’s intended outcome is thus to challenge and inspire EARMA delegates to learn from our experience in –and engage with us on – developing best practices for awareness-raising practices and tools. In the face of rapidly-changing R&D landscapes and rising demand for our services, we believe that together the RMAs of EARMA can raise the bar for pre-award work throughout the profession globally.