Deadline: 04-Sep-2025
The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research has opened its Science for Policy Grant Programme, aiming to enhance the connection between research and policy. Strengthening this interaction is expected to improve how societal challenges are understood and addressed, while also increasing public trust and policy legitimacy.
This programme focuses on how the government can better use research-based knowledge to shape effective and efficient policy responses. It encourages exploration of both existing and new ways of cooperation between researchers and policymakers to ensure research is more usable and used. These ideas will be developed and tested through policy labs—experimental environments where research runs alongside the phases of policy development. Within these labs, knowledge institutions, government bodies, and civil society organisations collaborate to work on active policy issues.
Grants range from €4,400,000 to €4,630,000 per project, with a project duration of between 48 and 60 months. Proposals must be submitted by a main applicant representing a consortium. The main applicant must have attended three collaborative workshops, which are a mandatory part of the application process.
Consortia must include at least a main applicant, one co-applicant, and one cooperation partner. Co-funders are optional and may support projects financially or in kind but are not eligible for NWO funding. Main applicants must hold a tenured or tenure-track position at an eligible research organisation, such as Dutch universities, UAS institutions, academic hospitals, KNAW or NWO institutes, and a few select research centres.
Eligible organisations must be based in the Netherlands, be public or non-profit legal entities, conduct independent research or education, and ensure a clear separation between economic and non-economic activities.
Proposals will be assessed on the problem definition and analysis, expected impact and its implementation path, the quality of the consortium, and the quality of the research plan. The application process includes two phases: first, participation in the collaborative workshops, followed by submission of a full proposal.
For more information, visit NWO.