Impact Funding Framework

Yes, as long as you meet the eligibility criteria as set out in the Guidelines, you do not need to be a member of the EIT Food community to apply for this funding.

Yes, as per the eligibility criteria, a minimum of two organisations from two eligible countries are required to start off a programme – but there should be a convincing plan to bring in others that you need. ‘Collaborative’ programmes should be collaborative and pan-European in design. Proposals should be aimed at integrating innovation, skills and business creation across whole value chains, responding to one or more of our Mission targets and considering related strategic challenges.

There is no specific minimum or maximum funding threshold, however annual programme budgets are expected to be between €250,000-€750,000. This can include programme management costs and also monitoring and evaluation for impact performance.

Collaborative programmes are likely to be multiannual and involve multiple organisations. As such programme budgets should be in line with the size of programme proposed. All proposals are evaluated against a clear set of criteria including Value for Money. The budget must therefore be commensurate with the workplan and proposed outcomes detailed.

EIT Food is a pan-European network of food system changemakers. In addition to funding innovative ideas, we run skills programmes, entrepreneurship mentorship schemes and public engagement programmes.

Collaborative Programme proposals should seek to make the best use of what we already have in place, whether its finding connections between skills and innovation projects along a value-chain, or using our existing business programmes to implement outcomes. Perhaps your programme includes trialling an innovative technology however you have no commercial test bed environment – but we do. It could be that you have the basis of a successful education programme that could be rolled out across Europe using our course development or online provision expertise. We invite proposals to suggest how you can best use our existing assets and infrastructure to further accelerate outcomes towards impact.

No, existing EIT Food programmes like Seedbed, FAN and EIT Food Masters Label programmes are managed outside of this funding framework.

The co-funding rate applies at programme level. This means that individual organisations may agree within their consortium to provide different levels of co-funding. For some consortia, this may mean that one organisation provides no co-funding at all, while others provide greater than 30%. This is at the discretion of the applying consortium.

You should be able to identify and detail programme expenditure in your accounts. Eligible expenditure can be allocated towards the 30% co-funding. Full project cost eligibility can be found under the Horizon Europe regulations. Please refer to Article 6 of the Model Grant Agreement and the Annotated Model Grant Agreement.

Existing EIT Food consortia can apply for new activities.

If part of your programme includes activity that produces a commercial return, or creates an equivalent commercial value, such as an equity interest in new businesses, we’ll ask the relevant benefiting partner to give a commitment to share some of that return as a form of reinvestment in our community under our Success Sharing Mechanism.

In return for de-risking your investment through our funding, we’ll typically ask for a proportionate share in commercial gains you make. This allows us to reinvest in food systems change to benefit us all. That income sharing only arises if and when your programme goes on to generate new commercial income for you or others.

Your application should include a forecast of what that repayment might be. If we do ask for a share in your return, we will negotiate a mutually acceptable level of community reinvestment with you under the Success Sharing Mechanism.

We will then put in place a short additional agreement alongside the main grant funding agreements. Where we agree to fund activities generating limited cost-recovery income, we do so on the understanding that in lieu of a share in income on that funding, you must be able to demonstrate significant social return on investment in line with the impact measurement framework in our Strategic Agenda 2021–27.

EIT Food funding is part of the Horizon Programme. We are able to fund organisations from an eligible Horizon Europe country. Please refer to the List of Participating Countries in Horizon Europe.

You are able to submit an improved proposal and should take into consideration the feedback that is provided as part of the evaluation process. The timetable for submission windows is outlined in the Guidelines.

Yes, as long as you meet the eligibility criteria as set out in the Guidelines, you do not need to be a member of the EIT Food community to apply for this funding.

Yes, as per the eligibility criteria, a minimum of two organisations from two eligible countries are required. The two organisations should also be from two different sides of the knowledge triangle (an enterprise plus an education or research partner).

There is no specific minimum or maximum funding threshold, however total project budgets are expected to be between €10,000-€1, 000,000. Commercial projects are expected to range between €50,000-€1,000,000 whereas not-for-profit are expected to range between €10,000-€100,000.

 All proposals are evaluated against a clear set of criteria including Value for Money. The budget must therefore be commensurate with the workplan and proposed project outcomes detailed.

The co-funding rate applies at project level. This means that individual organisations may agree within their consortium to provide different levels of co-funding. For some consortia, this may mean that one organisation provides no co-funding at all, while others provide greater than 30%. This is at the discretion of the applying consortium.

In this context, by “commercial” we mean projects with outcomes which potentially lead to trading profits via fees, sales or other income to an organisation or organisations funded under the project. 

Examples of this may include profit from service fees, licensable or sale-able Intellectual Property or know-how, product sales, establishing a spin-out vehicle for investment or trading purposes, etc.

Commercial projects also include those with benefit to linked third parties such as group companies and discounted trade between linked parties. All such projects must have a strong commercialisation strategy.

“Not-for-profit” applies where a proposal is aimed primarily at delivering outcomes leading to notfor-profit impacts (those not aimed directly at generating trading profits, income for distribution to shareholders, or similar). These could be social, environmental, health or consumer behaviour interventions, or products, services or learning resources being made available on a verifiable “costrecovery only” or free at point-of-use basis.

We would consider funding projects which have a long-term plan including a proof of concept phase as an early stop/go decision point. We would be unlikely to fund an isolated proof of concept activity which did not have follow-on plans in place as the route to impact would not be sufficiently clear.

You are able to submit an improved proposal, and should take into consideration the feedback that is provided after evaluation. The timetable for submission windows is outlined in the Guidelines.