This is a tip for anyone who is looking for grants in the European Union.
One of the things that is always tricky is that you find a grant, it sounds great, you fit all of the criteria, but then you look at the deadline and it is at the end of next year. It is the perfect round, but the timing is completely off.
Or, even worse, you see a social media post, someone texts you about it, or someone sends you an email talking about this great opportunity. Then you look, the deadline is in three days, and you do not have time to actually prepare a proposal.
Timing Is the Biggest Issue with Grant Applications
More than anything else, I think one of the biggest issues with grant applications is the timing, and I see it in my own inquiries. Someone saw that there is a deadline in one week and they are looking for support.
On the flip side, if they hear that the deadline is going to be in three months, they will actually postpone the communication until right before the deadline. Either way, the work ends up squeezed into the last few days.
A Calendar of Everything Due in the Next Two Months
To help avoid these last-minute bottlenecks, I added a calendar to Subsdy. It shows you all of the grants and tenders that are going to be due in the next two months.
That has a secondary benefit, because now you can turn the question around and ask what grants and tenders are available in the next two months, and then check your eligibility. You might find a grant you did not know about that is due in one month, and your company is actually a really good fit for it.
Too Many Grants, but They Are There
Europe has a lot of different grant funding programs. You could probably argue it is too much and too complex, that there are too many different grants, and that too much public funding goes into very strange, obscure grants that might not even have a significant return on investment.
But since they are already there, I usually recommend that companies check which grants are available in the next two months. If they find anything that is interesting, they should simply send in an application.
Of course, they have to check the eligibility requirements, and they have to make sure they send in a competitive proposal. But the first step is identifying the opportunity.
Check the Calendar on Subsdy
You can check out the calendar now on Subsdy. It is completely free: you just make an account, and then you can see all of the grants and tenders that are going to have a deadline in the next two months. If you are new to the platform, the introduction to Subsdy explains how the search and the grant pages work.
