Welcome to 3D Impact.

If you are visiting this website, you are probably looking for opportunities to fund part of your research idea or business innovation through European public grants. You also probably know about the complexity of developing such grant applications and the very high competition. For example: despite a total grants budget of €95 billion between 2021-2027, Horizon Europe (HEU) research grant applications have an average success rate of just 12%, with some Calls as low as just 2%. The total cost of preparing for such an EU grant – expressed in time spent by a project consortium on preparing the application – can be as high as €100.000. After having been involved in the development/writing/reviewing of >400 EU research and development proposals since 1998, my main advice to you is that...:

''...to obtain funding, you should treat the EU as your client and your research project should be embedded inside the Commission’s needs rather than the other way around!''

Traditional grant consultancies will sell you the names of funding programmes that might be relevant and then tell you how the programme fits your research idea. The low funding success rates are clear evidence that that approach does not work in EU research and innovation funding anymore! The European Commission uses grants as its prime instrument to solve European societal and competition problems.

So before you make a decision whether to invest significant time on submitting your project idea to highly competitive EU grant schemes like Horizon Europe (Pillar 1 incl. ERC and MCSA, Pillar 2 collaborative projects, or Pillar 3 incl. EIC and EIT), COST, CEF, Life+, Climate Action Innovation Fund (=successor to NER300), SME-Instrument, Interreg or others, you need to establish whether the idea or innovation:

• really meets stated and implicit European Commission policy priorities;
• fits the innovation standards expected by the European Commission;
• can be framed to show that it addresses a major European societal or competitiveness challenge;
• will be able to convincingly demonstrate the required the socio-economic impact on a European scale.

3d Impact can help you make a well-informed assessment and then put you on track toward a successful grant proposal!