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Supporting elements

The budget is usually presented in a tabular form, listing the resource requirements for a successful execution of the project. Any position in this budget must be justified (linked to an objective, work package or activity) and explained (cost structure). The maximum amount of found is given by the donor.

Do not fit the budgetary requirements of your research project to the donor limits. Plan your resource requirements realistically. If the donor limit does not allow you to reasonably and realistically conduct your planned research, you either slim down your research plan and drop work packages or activities (possible elements for a future follow-up proposal) or you do not submit your proposal to this specific donor. If you accept a under-funded project and you fail to deliver the results because of this, it will be exclusively your fault, and you may never be eligible to submit a project to this donor again.

The categories for which funding may be requested usually comprise at least the four positions of Personnel, Equipment, Supplies, and Travel. Your budget must be transparent (why you request how much money for which position), requiring that each and every position is justified (indicate why this item is required for a given activity and in what way is will contribute to a milestone, a deliverable or the overall goal of your research) and explained (cost composition and structure with supporting offers, proforma or official quotes for the requested funding items).

Both the evaluators (peer reviewers) and the donor representatives need to know that you and your team members are the right group to successfully conduct and manage the project. This information will be gained from the curriculum vitae that are usually appended to the proposal.

A project speficic CV should follow some rules:

  • Do not use your standard CV but prepare a specific one for each project that you submit.
  • Do not present generalities about your family ties, marital status of activities that are not
    related to the project.
  • Focus on your training, your experiences and your expertise in the field of the proposal.
  • List only few publications that are related to the planned research.
  • Keep the CV short (one page!)
  • Format all CVs of the partners in the same way

Reviewers and evaluators are grateful for any visual help that you may be able to provide and that assists in
understnanding the palnned interactioons and the functinning of your project. Particularly large interdisciplinary projects require a governance structure that clearly assigns tasks and responsibilities and ensures that the project is manageble.

The time table provides the chronology of the project activities but also of milestones and the deliverable in the form of a visual element. Activities, events and milestones are plotted in a chronological list (Y-axis) and against them time steps or intervals (X-axis). Thus, the expected starting time, the duration and the termination of each activity is presented in the form of a horizonal bar. The duration may vary from one week to several month, depending on the activity and the overall project duration

List activities by work package in a chronological order, assign the expected duration of each activity by a horizontal bar and highlight the milestones by using a different color from the activity bars.

In addition to a work breakdown structure or a logical framework, donors require some supporting elements. Especially a budget, a time table an a curriculum vitae are imporant. But for larger project or projects involving several disciplines, a visuallization of the project structure or the project governance may be helpfull.