CAN TARGET AUDIENCE BE A COMPASS FOR YOUR EU PROJECT?

 

In European funded projects, the journey begins with proposal writing. Based on their expertise and knowledge, partners try to submit a competitive proposal with a high impact and meaningful contribution to the challenges and political priorities of the Union.

In the work package for Dissemination and Communication (D&C) every project builds its short, medium and long-term strategy showing to the EC that indeed the consortium is ready to win the battle: their results will be beneficial for Europe and its citizens and the overall project will be able to transfer this knowledge and achievements to other future projects, initiatives and regions.

In short, the project must secure its sustainability and long-lasting impact in order to be funded. And how do we do this? By doing something which is often underrated: clearly defining the project’s target audience.

What is the target audience?

As we mentioned before, an EU-funded project should focus on the main priorities of the EC but also benefit the EU citizens as a whole or a specific group of people. One of the jobs of the D&C Work Package leader is first to identify who those citizens or groups are. That will be the target audience of the project.

Let’s discover what this term means.

A target audience is a group of people defined by certain demographics and behaviour. Often, businesses use what they know about their target audience to create user personas. Read more here.

HOW TO DECIPHER THE EC’S EXPECTATIONS

Repeat with us: “My idea has to match the work programme topic requirements. My idea has to match the work programme topic requirements. My idea has to match the work programme topic requirements”. If you are wondering “what is this woman blabbing about” and the notion of call analysis does not ring any bell, then you are definitely at the right place my dear readers.

An accurate analysis of the topic requirements is considered step 0, the pillar of a sound proposal. For this reason, Ömer and I will deliver a 2-hour webinar on call analysis on the 12^th of June, where theory will be coupled with a hands-on exercise.

We will practice on an existing call LC-SC3-EC-1-2018-2019-2020: The role of consumers in changing the market through informed decision and collective actions, and regardless of your domain of interest, this methodology can be applied to any other topic.

According to the Interim Evaluation of Horizon 2020 published in 2017, it is estimated that it costs Horizon 2020 applicants between EUR 1,908.9 million and EUR 636 million annually to write proposals. Of these costs, it is estimated that EUR 1.7 billion would be spent on writing proposals that do not get funded, including EUR 643.0 million for non-funded high-quality proposals alone.

Especially interesting for the seasoned FP7 applicants is the evidence that, despite a reduced bureaucracy and streamlined processes in Horizon 2020 compared to FP7, the effort of writing winning proposals has almost doubled since FP7 calls, creating overall higher costs of participation to Horizon 2020. Continue reading