While searching for Partner from Donor States, you should take into account some extremely important issues:
- most of them will receive many cooperation inquiries
- your inquiry should be clear, comprehensive, tempting and not to long
- you should have a reasonably clear picture of the project and its results. Potential partner should be able to assess what the project is about
- avoid general statements like “ we are a school that wants to work with a similar Norwegian school” - it has very little chance of success
- inquiry for partners should be sent as early as possible, invitations that are received a week or two before the application deadline will, in most cases, not even be considered by potential partners
- Inquiry should contain at least the following elements:
- contact person with address, email and phone number
- Institution and basic information about it
- number of students and staff
- previous experience in similar collaboration (EEA Grants, E+ etc. Examples only, not a long list)
- desired subject field(s) for collaboration (not too many, or it will be difficult to grasp for the recipient. If you want to work in several fields, make separate inquiries)
- main plans and ideas for the project (as above)
- time frame, size of project in terms of money and work and what is expected from partner
- basic conditions for the collaboration, incl financial issues. Read the call and accompanying documents thoroughly
- any other information that you think can be of interest
- quality, not quantity - it is better to send less inquiries, each of which will be exactly matched to the potential Partner than sending tens or hundreds of them that are very general. Institutions usually discard such general inquiries, even without any response
- schools in Norway are dependent on city councils that decide about their activity, so they may be the right recipient. It is worth checking that while looking for the Partner
Guidance based on Mr. Frank Moe’s presentation: ‘Norwegian institutions and how to reach them’, DIKU (Norway)
