How to communicate your project proposal

How to communicate your project proposal

As the owner of an organization or a company taking part in EU projects, you already know how important it is to find the calls that are going to suit your needs and preferences the most. It is equally important to finding partners that you can work with.

However, if you own a small organization or business, now taking your very first steps into the world of EU project you know how difficult it is to find the right partners or to be able to find partners at all. The reason is simple. A project proposal requires a lot of effort to be written and the organization writing the proposal will want to make sure that it will be approved and properly implemented no matter what.

Partner choice plays a very important role in the approval phase. If a proposal suggests advanced IT practices solving some of Europe’s most important issues but the partners are not able to support the actions based on their expertise, the proposal will most likely get declined. No matter how well written the proposal might be.

Therefore your organization might not be the first choice and entering the world of EU projects might prove to be a lot harder than what it really is. The solution to that is to write your own project proposals and aim to find partners to add to your consortium. Not to be added in theirs.

Having a proposal writer means that you are going to have a person with a lot of expertise, preferably in a specific field, that will be able to do research and write a proposal worthy of funding. That is one part of the equation. The second and most difficult part is to find the partners.

Communicating your idea

Potential partners are more likely to accept becoming a part of your consortium if a proposal has already been written. If the proposal is also a promising one, you might be able to score some pretty high-end partnerships which will make you even more visible in the world for EU projects, opening up doors for more collaborations in the future.

But how are you going to make your idea known to your potential partners? This is a tricky thing to do. You do not want to simply put your idea out there. This is your creation and you will not want to see it being implemented by someone else. At the same time, not notifying potential partners about your project idea will most likely mean that you will not be able to build your consortium in time for the call.

Here are some simple techniques you can follow to communicate your project idea the right way

Platforms like Eucalls.net are able to offer you the ability to declare interest in certain calls as well as commenting under them. By simply commenting with some details of your organization and the fact that you are interested in the call, you will not achieve your goal.

Any partner that will visit your profile will see that you lack the experience they need to add you as a partner. What you need to do is inform the partners that you are ready to submit your proposal.

You need to play with words. Make your comment interesting. Let them know that you have already written a proposal that is innovative and has a very high potential of getting approved. Build up your idea without revealing important information about it but make sure that potential partners will know it is a proposal worthy of checking out.

Make sure that your message will be clear. You are not interested in entering the consortium of someone else and become part of their proposals. You already have on and you need the best partners to submit it.

You need to explain that you have basically done all the heavy-lifting and that you are now at the final stage. From small organizations and businesses, this could really show off their professionalism. Partners that want to become parts of as many consortiums as possible but do not have the time to write and submit their own proposals will definitely think about yours.

At the end of the day, they could also add you to one of their project consortiums or make you part of their network for potential future collaborations. The better your proposal and the original collaboration will be the more likely you are to start “making friends” in the industry!

The easiest part is to write a comment with a general message and post it under that call that you are most interested in. The difficult part is to make your inquiries more focused. A lot of partners will declare interest in the same calls as you. Some of those partners will be perfect to add to your consortium and submit your proposal.

Instead of just commenting under the call and expect them to reply, contact them directly. Your message will need to be rather clear. Tell them you have a proposal ready and that you need expert partners to add to your consortium.

Tell them that their expertise in the specific field you are interested in is perfect to support your proposal goals and that you wish to talk to them about a potential collaboration. Ask to arrange a call with them and talk to them about the strongest parts of your proposal. Make sure that they will understand what your goal is and why your proposal is innovative enough to be accepted for funding.

These three are the easiest ways to communicate your project proposal. They are time-consuming and they cannot guarantee success in building the best consortium. Timing is of the essence so make sure that you are going to start with communications as early as possible.

If you do have an in-house proposal writer or a freelancer that you work with regularly, make sure that you will update your Eucalls.net profile, notifying potential partners of this important detail. Finding partners with the ability to write proposals is not as easy as you might think. This is a strong skill and you need to take advantage of it as much as possible.

One last note that you need to remember is the following. Simply writing project proposals to enter consortiums can be very bad for your reputation if those proposals do not get approved. You will want to make sure that your proposals will be of high quality. This is the best way for you to make your organization known as a good EU project partner and start entering more and more successful EU project consortia!