A call fiche is a simple tool that may support ‘project writing and management’ within universities. It can be used by project writing support services to identify suitable calls for proposals and disseminate them throughout the academic community. Communicating call opportunities is a key strategic issue in a university, where the participation of academic staff is often fluid and the time available to explore different opportunities is limited.
Creating call fiches: translating external calls into internal opportunities
Communicating opportunities offered by external donors needs to be tackled strategically in institutions like universities where the potential target may be broad, uncoordinated and not particularly well-versed in donor functioning and strategies. Most of the time, call guidelines are dense and not reader-friendly. They are technical and provide lots of details, while professors and groups of researchers need to identify quickly whether that call may be suitable or not. This is where ‘project writing and management’ services can play an important role in identifying relevant calls for the institution. They can select suitable opportunities, summarize the most important information and choose communication tools appropriate to the local academic community.
As just one of the range of initiatives that can be put in place at university level, a project writing and management support service may decide to start producing call fiches. First and foremost, they should summarize the main elements of the call guidelines. What is the funding institution, who can participate, when are the deadlines, what is the background and rationale behind the call and, above all, what kind of activities are eligible and how much space is given to researchers’ own ideas instead of the strict desiderata of the donor? But call fiches should be also an opportunity to explain why that call may be strategically interesting for the institution and how it may satisfy certain interests and internal needs.
This approach is only possible if the project writing and management support service has sound knowledge of its own institution, has analysed strengths and weaknesses and is aware of the needs and capacities of different groups, departments and units.
Once the call fiches have been created, the project writing and management services have to decide how to disseminate them. Examples include regular newsletters or the university intranet. If they are aimed at a specific group, they may be shared only with them as preliminary information before organizing meetings.
Generally speaking, call fiches are the first step towards organizing services for project writing and management. Dedicated staff have to go through the websites of relevant donors, identify open or upcoming calls, analyse their relevance and effectiveness with regard to the institution, detect the main elements and summarize them. This will make it possible to advise the internal academic community and start planning a more comprehensive service.
Call fiche template
In order to uniform the information, an institution should decide on a template for creating call fiches. Please find below an example that was discussed and adopted during the IMPALA project.
• Name of the programme
• Funding institution
• Eligibility criteria and application procedures
• Objective/priorities/background of the programme
• Funded activities
• Deadline
• Is this the only call available and will it be replicated?
• Structure of the application form (it may be more or less articulated and bureaucratic)
• Website
• Other notes
• Appendices (project guidelines, project application form, other docs)
• Why might this call be interesting for my institution/department? Which needs might this call satisfy?