Could/Should you apply for EU funding?

1. Review current and planned activities of the organisation: can they be broken up into different projects?
2. Review these projects and ask yourself whether they can be of interest to the EU (are they innovative? Do they represent best practice? Does it fall within a competence area of the EU? Can they be beneficial to policy makers? Could they be replicated abroad?)
3. Review EU funds (Regulation, work programmes, calls for proposals) to assess whether there is a match with your selected projects.
4. Seek assistance from EU, national departments, EU networks or other support services to get a sense of available funding and to get some assistance in identifying partners.
5. Make a first rough estimate of likely costs and benefits (take into account time to prepare application, amount of match funding, the amount of EU funding that can be attributed to existing activities etc.). If not beneficial, ABORT. 
6. Start developing the proposal EARLY (i.e. before the call is out). It is easier to get information and feedback from the Commission or national authorities before the call for proposals is out.
7. Once  a  call  is  issued,  the  final  preparation  of  the  project  can  begin.  In  most  cases applications  are  submitted  in  electronic  form  so  it  is  important  to  become  familiar with the application system used for the relevant programme. 

This resource was written in collaboration with Access Europe whose aim is to assist Irish organisations in identifying and securing EU funding to support their projects and activities.  For a full list of relevant funding programmes visit the Access Europe website. 

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