R&D Grants will often fund a percentage of the overall project costs – 70% grant funding is common for UK and European grants for an SME. The other 30% (referred to as Match Funding) must come from the applicant. Match funding is typically over £100k. What if you don’t have the match funding?

Sprk was founded to solve the cashflow needs of companies engaged in innovation. A Sprk Advance provides a solution to companies to allow them to invest without the requirement for other dilutive forms of capital such as raising equity.

Knowing what R&D grants are available is a massive challenge – understanding which R&D grants match best with your project, your funding needs, and your strategy, can consume huge amounts of research time and often yields less than satisfying results.

There are regional, national, and European R&D grants published every week with €billions of funding opportunities – EU Fuding Hub can offer a shortcut to finding the right grants for your project, right down to a regional-European level.

With partnerships comes agreements – who is responsible? What tasks are assigned to specific partners? What are the communication protocols? How are we managing this 2-5 year project? These and many other questions must be discussed and agreed in a Collaboration and/or Grant Agreement.

We have partnered with the contracts team at Stephens Scown, one of the most experienced and capable contract legal teams in Europe. The team have extensive experience with supporting lead partners in H2020 and Horizon Europe Collaborative R&D projects, negotiate and finalise Consortium Agreements and Grant Agreements – both required to start drawing down grant funding from the EU Commission. Furthermore, the team can support more broadly on Grant Agreements / Collaboration Agreements for a wide variety of UK and European grants and commercial projects.

Intellectual Property plays a key part in securing R&D grant funding (demonstrating work-to-date) and is a critical element of the outputs of grant funded R&D projects (what IP is created during the project). There are a myriad of ways to protect your IP, whether your business is set for high-growth, or if your research organisation is seeking to license new deep-tech research.

Collaborative R&D grant funded projects in particular present interesting challenges around IP. When 5 – 30 different organisations form a consortium to undertake a collaborative R&D project, who brings what IP and who will own the IP generated during the project, is always a discussion point.

Venturenomix has partnered with specialist IP firm Potter Clarkson to help your business, university, NGO or consortium navigate the R&D funding landscape with respect to IP.

R&D grant funders are increasingly requesting videos and pitch decks from applicants. For example, the first stage of the EIC Accelerator requires that SME applicants submit a 3 minute pitch video and 10 slide pitch deck, alongside text answers to specific questions.

Venturenomix has partnered with Cress Digital, a multi-disciplined digital marketing and creative design agency to help our clients produce high-quality videos and pitch decks for R&D grant applications, alongside additional support including branding, digital asset and website development.

Managing a collaborative R&D grant project with multiple partners from different countries all with different systems can be a real barrier to a successful R&D funded project. Under Horizon Europe, there are specific requirements for reporting on project progress and filing compliant financial claims to draw down the grant funding.

Venturenomix has partnered with Sploro, a Spainish-based team of highly experienced EU grant project managers who have developed a SaaS solution to help any organisation running Horizon project to properly manage their time and costs associated to the projects.