1.1. Finding funding opportunities

In order to find funding for research and development from outside the university, it is usually necessary to find a suitable funding instrument and prepare and submit a proposal. The specialists of the Research Administration Office provide assistance to the university staff in these matters. The specialists of the project management team help to find a suitable funding source and, if necessary, provide advice on writing a proposal.

It is a good idea to start preparing a proposal by drawing up a description of the idea, for which we recommend that you write down the following:

• the working title – can be long and clumsy at the beginning, should reflect the content as precisely as possible;
• the problem statement – which gap/shortcoming in knowledge/technology/skills/services/society/the field you want to address in the project;
• the objectives – as a rule, the general objective of the project and the sub-objectives necessary to achieve it;
• the main activities – what you will do to achieve the objectives of the project;
• the partners – concrete partners or types of partners (universities, companies, other organisations)

with a brief explanation of their main contribution to the achievement of the project objectives or implementation of the activities;

• the budget – the estimated costs to be incurred to carry out the project. As a rule, the proposal budget.
• A project is characterised by specific keywords.

To search for a funding instrument, a research group or researcher must formulate an idea. If necessary, action consultants and the project proposal writers team can be involved in mapping the idea. The idea is submitted to the project management team who applies a variety of tools to find a suitable action/call for proposals.

You can turn to your colleagues and cooperation partners already with the first draft description of the idea. The description of the idea also helps to find a suitable source of funding. If you do not know from which source to apply for funding for your idea, you can consult the Research Professional database of support measures open for access for the researchers of Tallinn University of Technology or contact the action consultants.

The Research Administration Office provides information on funding opportunities via the following channels:

• the website of the Research Administration Office on the intranet. General information on funding schemes.
• Newsletter. The regular newsletter of the Research Administration Office on funding provides an overview of the ongoing competitions and information events taking place.
• Research Professional. An online database of smaller and greater research funding opportunities. You can create a user account in the database, where you can select the areas of interest to you. The contact person in matters regarding RP is Kristel Rauk, rauk@taltech.ee
• Direct mail to the head of the research group. If a suitable funding option is found for a field of research, the employee of the Research Administration Office forwards it to the head of the research group or researcher engaged in the field.
• Information days Besides information days organised by the funders, the Reach Administration Office organises briefings/seminars/information days at the university, involving specialists, if necessary. Information regarding information days is disseminated in newsletters and separate e-mails.
• The action consultants are the first point of contact regarding specific actions. They provide advice on the rules of different actions and on the suitability of the idea for the action/call for proposals.
  The team of action consultants uses the keywords sent by the researcher to search for possible calls for proposals that could be of interest to the researcher and forwards these to the researcher, provides a brief overview of the specific requirements or forwards the partner search results.

Information on the project management team and the persons responsible for actions is available under contacts of the RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION OFFICE - on TalTech intranet

• Contacts with other universities, finding cooperation opportunities The Research Administration Office establishes contacts with the research administration offices of other universities and maps the possible cooperation interests of the researchers of our university.