Third party funding has become a more and moreimportant issue for individual researchers and research organizations. Each year,national and international funds and programmes allocate several billion Eurosand organize highly competitive award procedures. A successful grantapplication, or project proposal, is often a major step in building up aninternational career, as well as in establishing networks of project partnersaround the globe. Writing a successful proposal requires background knowledgeand skills that are not often trained in conventional PhD programmes. In thiscourse, we will discuss the following issues and train the respective skills:

• Types of grant and project proposals
• National and international sources of third party funding
• Fundamental differences between writing a journal paper and a proposal
• Individual versus cooperative projects and how to manage them
• Anatomy of a successful proposal and how to ensure high quality
• Key characteristics of review and selection processes

After attending this course, students will be able to:

• understand the logics and practices of different funding schemes and programmes
• translate a research question into an appealing grant or project proposal
• identify key success factors of grant and project proposals
• avoid the most common important mistakes
• further improve their writing skills

The course is organized in five modular sessions.Participants will work with sample material (call for tenders, drafts,proposals and reviews) and co-create a guideline for proposal writing. Ifdesired, the course can link up to a real-world proposal (for the EU programmeHorizon 2020) that will be developed in spring 2017 at the Institute forManaging Sustainability. To a certain extent, the course design can be adaptedto the needs and questions of the participants, in order to provide them withthe best possible support in deepening and enhancing their knowledge andskills. The working language and all written materials will be in English. 

Successful completion of this course requiresattendance of at least 80% of the sessions and assignments. Grade evaluationwill be based on

 1) active participation during the courseblocks (1/3)

 2) a summary of the lessons learned duringthe course, which will take the form of an individual guideline for writingproject proposals. This should be about 2.000 words and should be submittedfour weeks after the last block (1/3)

 3) three small assignments between the blocks(1/3)

20.3.2017

Reinhard Sefelin, Head of the WU Research Service Center 

https://www.wu.ac.at/en/the-university/organizational-structure/service-units/research-service-center/mission/

3.4.2017

Corinna Wilken, Austrian Research Promotion Agency 

https://www.ffg.at/en

4.5.2017

Markus Hametner, Co-ordinator of research projects funded by Eurostat 

http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/6975281/KS-GT-15-001-EN-N.pdf

Gerald Berger, Co-ordinator of the 

www.sd-network.eu

Martin Marek and Elise Lindner, Euro-Vienna EU-Consulting & Management 

https://www.eurovienna.at/team/

21.6.2017

Barbara Kieslinger and Gorazd Weiss, Centre for Social Innovation 

https://www.zsi.at/en/home

Katharina Jarmai, Co-ordinator of the Horizon 2020 project 

www.innovation-compass.eu

Andre Martinuzzi, head of the Institute for Managing Sustainability, will hold this course. Together with his team he was involved in more than 120 proposals, co-ordinated EU wide projects and consortia for more than 15 years. He recently evaluated the 7^th EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.