First funding attempt

Apparently you learn more from your failures than your successes.

Well, we certainly learned from our first funding attempt. We had scoured potential funders, and realised that we wouldn’t be in contention for most of them - many needed proof that the research group could deliver, whereas this was the inaugural project from this group. Classic catch 22 - can’t get funded until you have published, can can’t get published until you get funding. Also it appeared that didymo was not high on the radar of the funding agencies - it appeared that acceptance of didymo had somehow become the group-think.

So we chose a small local charitable trust, as their remit seemed perfect for our project - something in Canterbury that would advance understanding of the ecology and environment. They had funded similar work in the past, though not on didymo. Preparing the proposal certainly helped fine-tune our ideas. And the submission deadline generated urgency.

With much anticipation…….. we received our first funding rejection. Main reason given was related to needing more community engagement. Fair point, though hard to do anything without any funding with which to do something.

So, with a project plan but no funding, next step was to set up the website, and to try to include and engage as many people as possible. The more ideas, suggestions, criticisms, enthusiasm we can get, the better the project becomes and the more chance of success….