Applying for a grant in the European Commission is a labyrinth of different websites each with their own need to register. Grant Specs are largely in PDFs or Word Documents that are attached to the call. And it takes at least 6-9 months from open to decision. I have applied to about 20 grants throughout 2024 and haven't heard anything back from a single one yet.
EC scientific expert here (occasionally judging FP7/8/Horizon 2020/Horizon Europe grants in multiple areas including AI). I also authored some bigger proposals, one rejected (score: 13/15) and one funded.
It is perhaps not a good idea to apply to that many in such a short time frame, unless you have nothing else to do: the individual efforts need to be really excellent to succeed, so focus should be on quality rather than quantity. Why? There is a funding threshold, and you can have 5 proposals that get 13/15 ("good enough to fund"), but you still don't get any of them funded because there enough competing grants with 15/15 score, and after they receive their funding, the pot of money is already empty (the funding is in order of merit).
In my experience, most applications that fail to get the perfect score required are incomplete: To get excellent scores it is vital to FULLY address ANYTHING mentioned in the call. And to squeeze all that into 40 pages is an art. (There are folks that provide consulting support, which I have not used yet, or you could collaborate with someone who has worked on the other side to learn more about what is important.)
While getting grant money remains hard, I was pleasantly suprised about the judging effort and the EC's personnel energy put into the evaluation process and in making it fair; for each call, their is a special rapporteur going around and documenting that everything that should be done gets done the way it should be, and the EC take great pains to find experts that are diverse across multiple dimensions (gender, country, industry/academia, seniority, field of expertise etc.).
Thank you for your insightful reply. I am also registered as an Expert to the EC. I fully agree with you that completing all requirements in a 40-pager is hard. Which I think is exactly my point. It's competitive (that's good) and time-consuming. But I also believe grant applications are a muscle a startup should have when they want to do business with the government. In SpacecTech, Defense, and AI (my areas) this is largely unavoidable.
This has spawned almost an entire industry. Have a look at Zebra Embassy in Berlin as an example. I think it would be easier to "digitally transform" the process to be more efficient.
The websites certainly have their design quirks, as do the application forms (though you can avoid those traps by partnering with people who've done it before). But tbh a single document and 6 month turnaround for our Pathfinder bid was above average for grants we've won, and compares very favourably with our equity funding round.
