Cascading Grants Management

Abstract

The RDA Europe 4.0 Cascading Grants programme was established in support of multiple project objectives, including to build and strengthen the RDA community, democratise access to funding opportunities in the field of data infrastructures and interoperability, and bring forward the RDA legacy in Europe. The grants programme totalled 751.000 euros, distributed via open calls for Early Career Researchers (ECRs), Experts, Ambassadors, Adoption projects and European National Nodes. Cascading Grants allow the integration of third parties, i.e. "non project partners", into a project without being parties of the Grant Agreement themselves, thus enabling a wider scope of action and outreach. Through this mechanism, 87 grants were awarded to externals, including 56 travel grants. More than 30 third party contracts with institutions and individual persons were concluded. This report reflects on the procedures and processes of the grants management as established from the beginning of the project. At first, the set up of the Grants Committee and pool of evaluators are explained. Next, the call process and the related steps are described. The different grant types are presented in detail and the legal and financial management is explained. Summing up, this document evaluates experiences, workflows and best practices and concludes with recommendations for the cascading grants scheme. The aim of the Cascading Grant mechanism was to encourage European participation in RDA and strengthen the community structures. The impact of this work is detailed in the related deliverables D2.3 Final RDA Results, Adoption & Take-Up report, D2.4 Final Impact report on support for EU participation in RDA and D3.5 Coordination of National Nodes Framework