Grant writing advice

The process of writing a grant proposal varies for each researcher, topic and discipline. In any case, it is beneficial when writing your proposal that you fully understand the call requirements and its scope, along with the evaluation criteria. If you would like to discuss your grant proposal, then you can contact VU IXA-GO, Grant Office. They provide a review service for most common national and European grants as well as a wide range of workshops, training and information sessions. VU IXA-GO, Grant Office aims to tailor their support to your needs and provides legal and administrative support if a grant is awarded.

IXA-GO offers various resources for the supported funding programs as well as training and workshops. These can be explored on the Funding and Valorisation Platform.

Research support is provided at faculty level, so contact your faculty support team to see what they can do for you. Some faculties also provide grant writing advice and support themselves, such as FSS and SBE.

EU grants

VU IXA-GO, VU Amsterdam Grants office collects useful information for various national and European grants and can help you find the most suitable funding for your research project. Besides the Dutch Research Council (NWO), as well as other national funding providers, the European Commission (EC) also funds research through different grants. For these European grants the VU IXA-GO, VU Amsterdam Grants Office adopts the Legal Entity Appointed Representative (LEAR) function. The primary task of the compliance officer/LEAR is to ensure that all grant-related processes run smoothly. The LEAR has an important administrative role as the primary contact between VU Amsterdam and the EC or any other major international grant providers.

Most of the responsibilities of the LEAR fall under the so-called post-award stage and during the phase of conducting your research. However, we would strongly encourage you to contact VU IXA-GO, VU Amsterdam Grants office. Also, if you have submitted a proposal in the Funding & Tender Portal of the EC without having (yet) contacted the VU IXA-GO, then please also include either Martijn van Houten (e.m.j.van.houten@vu.nl) or Sedef Iskit (s.iskit@vu.nl) as a (participant/coordinator) contact.

Other grants

The grant advisors of VU IXA-GO offer a clear overview of the most common grants, such as those provided by the EC and NWO. However, there are both many other grants and various types of funding that might suit your research better. To identify the right funding opportunity, all employees of VU Amsterdam can use Research Connect through Single Sign On. VU Amsterdam Grants Office also provides support through many different services and via the commitment of a compliance officer.

The compliance officer/LEAR serves as an administrative linchpin between VU Amsterdam and various grant providers. Amongst other things, they can help you with:

- Registration and timely validation of the legal entity Stichting VU in different administrative grant systems

- Management of user accounts for application and funding portals

- Various administrative aspects of specific grants and/or smaller funds

- Provide support with irregular/unforeseen project developments

- Facilitating knowledge networks for project management