A warm (dare I say scorching?) welcome to the August 2024 edition of Grants Watch, GrantTree’s monthly roundup of the latest and greatest funding opportunities open to UK organisations.
This edition, we’re looking at funding for projects focused on the following areas:
- Marine and maritime, in the Great South West
- Scalable digital mental health interventions
- Industrial research involving at least one European partner
- Sustainable medicine manufacturing
We’re also highlighting the latest round of Smart, Innovate UK’s industry-agnostic competition for innovative SMEs, Innovation Loans, and the round 8 of the Investor Partnerships scheme.
Take a look through. If you see any competitions you think you might eligible for and would like to know whether you have a good chance of winning, my colleagues and I would be happy to give you a free, unbiased, and no-strings-attached assessment of your suitability.
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Eureka collaborative R&D: Eurostars 3 Call 7
Funding available: Up to €360,000
Deadline: 12 September 2024, 11 am
Innovate UK is investing up to £2.5 million to fund collaborative industrial research projects with a high market potential.
Eligible projects must:
- Include at least one partner from another Eureka Eurostars country
- Include at least one UK-registered SME
- Be led by an innovative SME
- Last at least 36 months
In addition:
- SMEs from Eurostar countries must shoulder at least 50% of the project’s total cost
- No single applicant can account for more than 70% of the project’s total cost
- Projects must have an exclusively civilian purpose
- Project organisations must be independent of one another
Innovate UK Innovation Loans Future Economy: Round 16
Funding available: Up to £2 million
Deadline: 28 August 2024, 12 pm
Innovate UK’s Innovation Loans scheme isn’t a grant competition. However, it is an excellent source of financing for late-stage R&D projects.
The competitions offers loans of between £100,000 and £2 million with attractive terms such as a deferred, below-market interest rate of 3.7% during project execution.
In addition, unlike many grant competitions, you can acquire an Innovation Loan covering up to 100% of your project costs.
To apply, you must be a UK-registered SME who’s in a position to take out a loan.
Innovate UK Investor Partnerships: SME Round 8
Funding available: Up to £900,000
Deadline: 14 August 2024, 11 am
The latest round of Innovate UK’s Investor Partnership competition is now open.
This scheme helps UK SMEs develop and commercialise innovative projects by connecting them with sizable amounts of grant and equity funding from a curated list of private investors.
The equity investment you secure must be at least equal to the amount of grant funding provided by Innovate UK.
This round is offering funding for projects aligned with two themes:
- Creative catalyst – projects within the creative industries which are underpinned by innovative digital technology
- Mindset – the application of extended reality for digital mental health
Innovate UK’s Smart grants: July 2024
Funding available: Up to £700,000
Deadline: 23 October 2024, 11 am
The July 2024 round of Innovate UK’s Smart grant is now open.
This £25 million Innovate UK competition is designed to help UK SMEs develop “world-leading ideas designed for swift, successful commercialisation.”
One of the key benefits of Smart is that it is open to organisations from all sectors, not just more traditionally innovative areas like biotechnology.
However, its inclusive scope also makes Smart extremely competitive, with just 3-7% of applicants receiving funding.
Qualifying projects must:
- Have between £100,000 and £1 million in qualifying costs
- Start by 1 April 2025
- End by 31 March 2027
Launchpad: marine and maritime in the Great South West – R2 CR&D
Funding available: Up to £750,000
Deadline: 16 October 2024, 11 am
Innovate UK, in partnership with Cornwall Council, Plymouth City Council and Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership, is investing up to £3 million in innovative marine and maritime projects in the Great South West.
For the purposes of this competition, the Great South West encompasses Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, Devon, Somerset and Dorset.
The competition’s £3 million kitty comes from Innovate UK’s Launchpad programme, which supports “clusters of SMEs and the most innovative businesses to progress their ideas toward commercialisation, contributing to local economic growth.”
The competition is split into two strands:
Collaborative Research and Development (CR&D) offers grants of up to £150,000-£700,000, covering up to 70% of the project’s qualifying costs. Projects must involve more than one organisation.
Minimal Financial Assistance (MFA), which offers grants of £25,000 – £100,000 covering 100% of projects’ qualifying costs.
Eligible projects must:
- Last 6 to 18 months
- Start on or after 1 April 2025
- End by 30 December 2026
Mental Health Award: Accelerating scalable digital mental health interventions
Funding available: Up to £7 million
Deadline: 5 December 2024, 5 pm
Financed and run by the Wellcome Trust, this international competition is offering sizable grants to “fund research to evaluate and further develop scalable digital interventions to advance early intervention in depression, anxiety and psychosis.”
This call is open to the following types of organisations, which can be based anywhere in the world except mainland China.
- Higher education institutions
- Research institutes
- Non-academic healthcare organisations
- Not-for-profit or non-governmental research organisations
- Company or not-for-profit organisation
This competition is focused on “proposals that target symptoms of anxiety, depression and psychotic disorders”. This includes:
- All types of anxiety and depressive disorders (including obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder)
- All forms of psychotic disorders (including schizophrenia, postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder)
Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing: Expression of interest
Funding available: Up to £100,000 (up to £10 million in phase two)
Deadline: 16 October 2024, 11 am
This competition offers funding for companies working on sustainable medicine manufacturing through any of the following three pillars:
- Green chemistry
- Circularity
- Productivity and resource
Qualifying projects must:
- Start by 1 January 2025
- End by 30 June 2025
- Last three to six months
This competition is the first of two phases. This ‘expression of interest’ (EoI) competition is phase one. It is designed to help companies establish a consortium and prepare a case for a Grant Challenge award (phase two).
The Grant Challenge award will launch next year and offer grants of up to £10 million to large-scale collaborative R&D projects involving at least three partners from across the medicines manufacturing supply chain.
Only projects that succeed in phase one can apply for the Grand Challenge in phase two.
Explore your funding options with GrantTree
If you’d like to learn more about any of the competitions above or get an expert assessment of your eligibility, GrantTree’s experts are here to help.
We can explain what grant funding calls you may be eligible for, covering current opportunities and schemes that are likely to open in the coming months.
To book your initial consultation with our grant funding experts, just get in touch.
