Finding the right (i.e. winning) consortium partners

Treat joining a consortium as a project in its own right. Make a plan of activities and tasks and allocate time and resources. Set up review milestones to check progress. Being in the right consortium is almost as important as writing a good proposal. The European Commission recently said at a Cluster 5: Climate, Energy and Mobility Programme Committee meeting: “Never in the history of Horizon Europe has a consortium of just newcomers to the programme been successful”. Therefore, your challenge is to find people who have a strong track record of past success and demonstrate to them that they need you in their team if they are going to continue to be successful. The following suggested actions are in what I think of as descending order of usefulness.

Networking is by far the most useful way to find consortium partners. You will often hear people say: “I was lucky, I got invited into a consortium by somebody I knew already”. If you know somebody already that is in a position to invite you to join a consortium, it is likely that these are part of your professional network rather than somebody you met while waiting for the kids to come out of football practice. You won’t win the Lottery if you don’t buy a ticket, and in the same way, there are things you can do to improve your chances of being invited to join a consortium. Networking isn’t just about following people on LinkedIn, it’s about interacting with others in your sector in such a way that they can see the value of your work and how it might help them with their work. Things you can do to improve your networking profile, regardless of whether you are seeking consortium partners for a specific competition, include:

• Write posts/blogs for Linked In, encourage your colleagues to share/forward these and, if people comment on your post, engage with them. Formal peer reviewed papers have their place but for networking where you can have a discussion in almost real time and allow others to see that discussion, Linked In is very useful.
• Join European associations and similar organisations for your sector and be an active member. Don’t just pay your subscription and occasionally scan the newsletter but join in the work of the association. Ask about specific working groups and join these, especially those writing technology roadmaps and similar. Volunteer to draft documents and papers (if you are short of time, volunteer to be a reviewer). Demonstrate thought leadership and that you are the person that everyone needs to have in their team if they are going to be successful. If you aren’t sure which organisations are the best ones for you to engage with, you can search the Cluster 5: Climate, Energy and Mobility Stakeholder Directory by sector or ask your NCP.
• Attend conferences, workshops, etc and be an active participant. Don’t sit there answering emails or browsing X on your phone, pay attention to every speaker and actively think of what question you might ask of them that demonstrates that you have grasped the key issues, understand the implications of these and that you have additional insight that should be considered in any follow-up work (after all, if they’re planning a follow-on project, they need you in their consortium don’t they?). Don’t be confrontational/negative about what they have achieved but be supportive and additive to their work.
• For online workshops and meetings, it’s even more important to stand out as somebody who would make an ideal consortium partner.
• If possible, keep your camera on and make sure you are paying attention (and are seen to be paying attention).
• Once the meeting is underway, write in the chat “Good morning/afternoon, great to see so many old friends here”. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know anyone because each person in the virtual room now thinks that you know everyone else except them. There is a subtle change in the way that people respond if they think you’re part of the ‘club’ (most easily recognised if you are not part of the club). Continue to engage the room by being active in the text/chat:
  • Paste a few sentences (not an essay) to explain who you are beginning “For those I’ve not yet met in person, I’m…” i.e., still implying you know most people there
  • Post your email address and encourage people to contact you – think of it as handing out your business card
  • Post points in support of, or to add to those of, the speaker (not negative points, even if they are obvious, as these are rarely well received by the audience and it’s those people you are networking with, not just the speaker). Prepare at least one question that shows your insight into the issue being discussed.

To find potential partners that have a strong track record of previously successful proposals and therefore know how to write a winning proposal, you can search the EU’s CORDIS website where every past project has a webpage that contains a brief description of the project and lists the coordinator and project participants (the link above already filters for just Horizon Europe projects from Cluster 5). Once you have logged in to the system (same login as the rest of the EU Funding and Tenders portal), you can get in touch with the ‘Participant Contact’ which is the term for the specific person involved in the project, by clicking on ‘Contact the organisation’. For example:

• Searching using key words 'Maritime Wind Shipping' returns 15 projects.
• The first result is given as ‘Orcelle Wind as main propulsion by ORCELLE’ and clicking through the link takes us to the project’s page which tells us that the coordinator of this project is Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean AS.
• Scrolling down the web page for the project we can see that there are 11 other participants too. Under each organisation (click the down arrow on the right to reveal if not visible) is a link to ‘Contact the organisation’
• When you click through, you will come to a text box where you can send a message – ask them about their project, be interested in what they’re doing. All projects have to Disseminate and Communicate their results so they should be happy to hear from you. Build a relationship with them and tell them about your capabilities before you ask if they’re involved in preparing a follow-on proposal and perhaps you could help?
• You will be limited to sending only about 10 messages a day and I have heard that there is only about a 10% response rate but if you make a point of sending 10 every afternoon before you log off for the day, you will get five responses a week from people that you know that they know how to write a winning proposal - they've done it before!

Another significant advantage of searching Cordis is that you will be able to ensure that your proposed project builds upon projects already funded and you won’t be duplicative. It’s very important when writing a proposal that you show that you know what projects are already completed or currently underway.

There are several partner search websites where you can search the profiles of potential partners and upload your own too. However, it is quite rare for well-established Horizon Europe participants to use these schemes, and they’re the people you’re trying to attract so my advice is not to rely on these but to use them as well as networking and searching CORDIS as described above. Some examples include:

• The EU funding and tenders portal has a Partner Search tab.
• Each Topic (EU word for individual competition) listed on the EU funding and tenders portal has a specific link to organisations seeking to partner for that Topic (scroll down on an individual Topic web page). Here is a link to the Cluster 5 relevant open or forthcoming Topics.
• The Cluster 5: Climate, Energy and Mobility National Contact Points from across Europe have created a partner search facility just for this part of the programme - GREENET. This is a 'curated' system so only approved profiles are uploaded.
• The Enterprise Europe Network has a Partnering Opportunities facility and although this is mainly for commercial contacts there is also the ability to filter for Research and development cooperation agreement partners.

Getting in to the right team is difficult but essential and hopefully the above steps can help you to find the right partners.

Louise Mothersole
louise.mothersole@iuk.ukri.org
Horizon Europe UK National Contact Point for Mobility