2/5 - Keeping track of essential procedures

KEEPING TRACK OF ESSENTIAL PROCEDURES is an essential tasks to help identify new funding opportunities and call deadlines in good time for action.

Relevant procedures need to be installed to ensure the monitoring and frequent checking of funders' websites and the regular up-dating of the Funders Map. Procedures will also be necessary to ensure that the information about funding opportunities is communicated in time and to the right colleagues.

In addition to relevant and supportive procedures, versatility, system thinking and a creative mindset are pre-requisites to do this task well. This will help in spotting opportunities that might be less obvious at first sight. Using information from third parties, such as funding portals and other information providers can further assist this task. To fulfil this task effectively, an in-depth knowledge of the overall plan and its projects is required so that funding opportunities can be clearly associated with the various requirements of the projects.

The relevant tasks include:

• Online research of funding sources and scanning for new funding opportunities and calls.
• Assessing the relevance of information of a funding call vis-a-vis the projects.
• Making connections between funding sources to assess the potential for mixed funding approaches.

The person/s responsible for monitoring the Funders Map need to have a wide knowledge about EU and domestic funding programmes and sources. This knowledge should include mainstream as well as alternative funding avenues and resourcing methods.

The task further requires good communication skills supported by relevant procedures so that members of staff and all teams involved in project development are kept up-to-date.

This tasks includes two tools which are both checklists regarding the skills, competences and tasks concerning the position of one/two persons responsible for the regular monitoring of funding opportunities and up-dating of the Funders Map. Here are templates in Word format for checklist 1 (skills) and checklist 2 (procedures). 

Click on the stations to navigate through the Strategy line!

Key challenges of the step

• Ensuring a regular and efficient updating process of the Funders Map and of checking for funding opportunities and calls can be challenging (i.e. covering for staff absence; processing a large amount of information quickly and effectively).
• A further challenge exist in understanding quickly the main objectives and requirements of a new call or funding opportunity to assess its relevance to the project.
• A key challenge is to fully understand the overall plan and its projects and to maintain regular contact with the relevant teams that design projects.

Main risks

• Missing funding calls because the person responsible for checking regularly is absent (holidays, sickness, etc.) and there is nobody else knowledgeable about checking the Funders Map.
• Missing funding opportunities and calls because the projects and their content are not known well enough by the person who monitors the funders' websites.
• Missing funding opportunities or not leaving sufficient time for preparing funding applications, because the websites are not checked frequently enough.
• Missing funding opportunities because the project teams are not informed or informed too late about the identified funding opportunities.

Helpful tips

• Ensure that all relevant Funding Team meetings carry an agenda item called 'up-date on funding opportunities'. This should ensure to keep the awareness levels of funding (and other developments) high.
• Attend information and training events from funders and other information providers to keep up to date. These events also help to network with others, and pick up intelligence on new funding methods.
• Ensure that registration IDs and passwords for accessing funders' websites can only be changed by those responsible for the Funders Map/database.
• In times of high pressure (for example near the submission deadline, or failed funding applications) responsive and collaborative partners are of huge benefit. Therefore, keep partners involved in the process of identifying funding opportunities and use their input effectively. A relevant process or procedures could ensure not to forget about this.
• Ensure that the person who has responsibility for scanning/monitoring the Funders Map will have one or two deputies to cover for staff absences.