Creating value for members: EEUK Associates and the Research Project Fund

The EEUK Board is finding ways of creating more value for our members, and this blog explains two results which we have just introduced. Our membership is institutional, mainly universities, and this brings a large and growing number of individual participants to IEEC and other events as well as through other interactions. We aim to strengthen the value of these development networks which connect individual educators and practitioners with EEUK.

To start with, we’ve introduced the very simple idea that any enterprise practitioners, academics, careers professionals and senior staff with influence over the organisation’s enterprise and entrepreneurship provision, are all eligible to become EEUK Associates.

This probably means that you are one already. This is intended to broaden our individual membership base and strengthen their lasting connections with EEUK as a learning organisation. There is no additional fee to be an Associate, but you are welcome to use the title as a personal, career or role descriptor, for example in staff profiles, CVs and professional communications.

You are encouraged to register here to receive your personal copy of the newsletter and other communications. Already there has been an uplift in registrations resulting from this change. Naturally, people registering as Associates are welcome to progress to Fellowships through the recently introduced professional award scheme.

The second change is to the Enterprise Education Research Project Fund (EERPF). This has supported 33 research & development projects since 2011 and we currently invest up to £25,000 each year. The guiding principle is that projects should benefit the wider EEUK community as well as the member organisation(s) awarded funding. To ensure projects deliver useful and topical research, insights and practice for members, we have reviewed the fund criteria and introduced these enhancements in time for the 2019 call for proposals, which is now live:

Firstly, only one bid per institution can be funded in any one year. This is intended to increase access and fairness across our growing membership. Proposals may be submitted by a single member or partnership of two members.

Rather than proposals needing to show alignment with all six aims of EEUK, they now need to indicate at least three aims to which they will contribute.

Projects are asked to focus on one of these priority themes:

• Contributing to the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) agenda, in the LEP context (where applicable in England).
• Internationalising enterprise education and partnerships in the context of Brexit.
• Social innovation, enterprise, community engagement.
• Enterprising learning in Further/Higher apprenticeships and vocational education (including FE/HE collaboration).
• Innovative approaches and applications using conceptual and policy frameworks in enterprise / entrepreneurship education, such as EntreComp; effectuation; Design Thinking.
• An alternative, clearly identified key economic, educational or social policy area may be chosen.

The selection criteria have been simplified, and the application form streamlined. To enhance the value of projects for members, proposals must include a plan to evaluate and measure impact. The requirements for project findings and outputs to be shared and disseminated through engagement with the EntEd community have been enhanced, such as events, online videos, and Open access media, including journals and institutional repositories.

The closing date for proposals for 2019 is midnight on 20 May. The call documents and examples of current and past funded projects are here .

There will be an opportunity to discuss the fund criteria and application process at the REntEd event on 17 April. The award winners will be announced in early July. We look forward to receiving your excellent and innovative proposal!

Professor David Rae, De Montfort University and Director of EEUK