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Lessons from a Danish research institute’s funding engagement scheme
The funding world is a jungle of possibilities. For classic research funding, it might be top-down or bottom-up; in innovation, dilutive or non-dilutive; and then there is the overload of abbreviations: RIAs, IAs and CSAs…
Truly, guiding researchers to suitable funding opportunities is no easy task.
To help researchers find and engage with the right schemes for them, many research managers and administrators organise awareness-raising activities. But they face well-known issues: researchers are busy, emails can be overlooked, central events rarely fit everyone’s schedules and targeted listings are resource-intensive. All too often, research support offices risk becoming passive rather than actively building a pipeline of future proposals.
Our journey
At the Danish Technological Institute, the research managers and administrators in our international centre have developed an awareness-raising process that works well for the nearly 1,100 specialists employed by the institute. This effort has increased both the number of proposals we submit and the number of projects we win. While every institution is different, we believe a well-thought-out awareness-raising initiative can bear fruit. Here, we outline our initiative, known as Outreach.
DTI is a research technology organisation, conducting applied research that bridges the gap between academia and commercial R&D. We’re an independent non-profit that operates test and demonstration facilities, so our researchers also perform commercial contracting for both Danish and international customers, and many clients become partners in our research projects.
It was the launch of the EU’s Horizon Europe programme in 2021 that prompted us to think strategically about our awareness raising. We decided to reinvent our approach based on the challenges we faced during previous framework programmes and put the user experience of our researchers at the heart of our work.
In particular, we knew that it was in sprawling top-down programmes such as Horizon’s second pillar, on global challenges and industrial competitiveness, that awareness raising could have the greatest return on investment. So while our centralised team of seven full-time research managers and administrators also supports proposals in a range of other programmes, our proactive efforts are focused firmly on pillar two and its associated joint undertakings.
Intense knowledge
When we redesigned our awareness-raising initiative, we set out to promote internal collaboration between departments and encourage our researchers to coordinate proposals themselves. We knew we’d be facing challenges along the way—particularly the workload that proactive awareness raising would bring to our small research support office.
Our Outreach initiative, scalable by design, has grown and evolved since its 2021 rollout but the core remains the same: we start by analysing the pillar two work programmes, which outline hundreds of funding opportunities for specific challenges. Our team reads all 1,500+ pages of those programmes—sometimes multiple times as drafts develop—to build intense knowledge of the opportunities available. We refresh our knowledge annually and hold office-wide workshops whenever new work programmes are published.
We also conduct ‘interest-mapping meetings’ with DTI’s 20+ R&D departments to stay updated on their interests, capabilities and priorities. These meetings, held at least twice a year, involve two research managers and administrators and a handful of senior researchers from each department. We’ve found that a mixture of shared note-taking and regular conversations keeps us up to date on various departments’ interests and ensures we always know which research managers and administrators will have the latest information.
Armed with detailed knowledge, our team matches researchers with funding opportunities, producing longlists at departmental level. These lists include details like expected project budgets and technology readiness levels, helping researchers make informed choices. We review these longlists in targeting meetings with departmental researchers, helping them select a shortlist of target calls.
We’ve found that well-informed research managers and administrators can really help researchers in prioritising multiple attractive opportunities due at the same time and understanding the funding programmes’ technicalities. Even experienced applicants can benefit from our knowledge of the political thinking behind specific ‘destinations’ within Horizon Europe, or our inside track knowledge on what’s coming.
Building capacity
In parallel, we conduct capacity-building initiatives including an institute-wide network focused on Horizon Europe, fostering peer-to-peer learning and expert insights through regular meetings, workshops and newsletters. We also run workshops and training courses to improve proposal-writing skills and build internal networks between departments.
This process puts our researchers in a strong position as they start engaging with their networks and forming consortia. While not every effort results in a proposal, this approach feeds a steady stream of engagement into our proposal-writing pipeline. More proposals entering the pipeline leads to more submissions, more projects won and more top-notch research.
Of course, the Outreach initiative is labour-intensive, so in late 2022 we started a concerted effort to develop tools to reduce the workload and automate tasks such as compiling lists of funding opportunities. Thanks to this, we created the Outreach Table, a digital platform on DTI’s intranet, which helps researchers see which of their peers are considering bids to similar opportunities.
Our Outreach work has certainly improved collaboration within DTI, and our Outreach Table has enabled early proposal collaborations to happen. The systematic approach has demystified Horizon Europe for our researchers, lowering barriers and increasing engagement in international projects. This has driven up interest and success rates in the programme and had wider positive impacts across DTI.
Pro tips
Our Outreach programme was designed specifically for DTI and will not be universally applicable. However, we firmly believe that a proactive approach to awareness raising is worth the effort. Here are some key takeaways from our experience:
- Decide which programmes to target—focus on those offering the greatest return on investment (which may not necessarily be financial).
- Adapt processes to your specific case—tailor your approach to your researchers and institution.
- Review and revise your process—be flexible to meet colleagues’ needs.
- It’s a team effort—collaborate with other research managers and administrators for greater effectiveness.
- Embrace digital tools—use technology to ease the workload.
- Accept that it takes time to save time—invest upfront in developing tools and processes for long-term benefits.
What’s next?
While we’re proud of our Outreach initiative, it’s still very much a work in progress. This year, we’ve begun developing tools that incorporate generative artificial intelligence to help us in our work while also keeping our eyes open for commercial tools that can directly help or inspire us.
We’re also now focusing on how to support researchers’ participation in external partnership activities earlier on in the process.
And we keep our ears open to ideas from outside DTI, and that certainly includes other research managers, research administrators and research support offices, so if you’d like to discuss any of the ideas presented here or maybe your own awareness efforts, please do get in touch.
Luke John Murphy is a consultant, Paula Andrea Páez is a senior consultant, and John Stian Haukeland is EU funding manager at DTI.
This is an extract from an article in Research Professional’s Funding Insight service. To subscribe contact sales@researchresearch.com