How to get a grant for the development of the project, if you are a poor student? And is it worth it

How to get a grant for the development of the project, if you are a poor student? And is it worth it.

In this article I will tell:

• whether to receive a grant;
• how to get a grant for the development of the project;
• pros and cons of receiving a grant;
• my experience of getting a grant.

This article is not an advertisement.

Is it worth getting a grant?

After the birth of any idea, we almost always step on the “favorite” rake called “financing”. And after meeting with them, the idea becomes not very good, and in general is nonsense, not now, another time, then, etc. etc. And at a certain point you realize that if this idea can help others, then you can get around this rake in various ways, attracting funding from the outside. One of these ways is to get a grant.

Is it worth getting a grant? The answer to this question depends on many factors, I will try to select a few basic ones, and everyone decides whether or not to receive it or not.

• a wish

It's all very simple, it is either there or not. The existence of a desire depends on whether a person wants to mess with public money (yes, we are talking about federal grants), whether a person wants to be responsible, and whether a person has free time to fulfill the conditions specified in the agreement.

• budget

If the required amount for the implementation of your idea / project in the region of 50 - 100 thousand rubles, then it makes no sense to climb into this swamp, it is better to save. If the amount of the project from 100 thousand and above, you can try.

• commission decision

This factor does not depend on you. If it is easier to grant you can not give.

How to get a grant?

If you do decide on this, then here is a brief instruction. As I did:

• registered on the AIS Youth website, during registration he entered the passport data and its scans, addresses, passwords, attendances to the request ...
• I downloaded the application form, it briefly points by point (the points are sometimes not clear and you have to write nonsense there) described the project
• then chose the nearest event, found a suitable category (life hacking: for the project to be chosen, make it socially oriented)
• Well, actually everything, sit wait for the announcement of the results.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantages include the opportunity to implement the project with minimal costs for yourself, with the amount of the grant is paid only what is stated in the estimate, the commission and other expenses are paid "from own pocket". You can also include here the experience gained during the project, and I did not see anything more.

And now the cons, most of them are described in the grant agreement.

If you have fulfilled the conditions of the grant, submitted the report, but for some reason the reviewers did not like it, they are entitled to impose penalties on you, in monetary terms, up to the full return of the grant, and this is an unpleasant phenomenon, since at the time of delivery report money invested in the project. Another disadvantage is the process of meeting the conditions of the grant. In our case, we had to carry out career guidance activities in schools, but in many schools we were refused and demanded permission from the regional minister of education, but our requests were ignored and we could not get permission. And in the report itself, the forms for filling are written in the form of a rebus and it’s hard to understand that you need to enter there. And perhaps the biggest disadvantage is that the funds after the winnings are credited to the account a month later, and the agreement states that if the funds are credited to the account with a monthly delay, the contract should be renewed. And if, due to price movements, you have a balance (as it happened with me), they will tell you by calling the “hot line” to contact the grant support department of the main expert expert so that after a very long correspondence describing the problem, she said to you: “Send me additional positions in the estimate”, and after sending, after 2.5 weeks they answered you: “You should not have a balance”, and then your letters will be unanswered, without explaining how to proceed.

My experience

And now a little about my experience in obtaining a grant. At the end of 2017, a friend says: “We now have a laboratory at the department (Industrial Electronics and Information Measuring Equipment), but it hurts too ancient, new equipment was delivered about 20 years ago, it would be necessary to update, but to attract more people, empty, dying out, ”the university naturally wasn’t going to allocate money, the crisis was all there. Well, we decided to put together an initiative group under my strict guidance, and began to think how and from where to attract finances and people. And here the comrade gives another idea with a grant, well, we did not waste time in vain, we developed a project, it turned out to be socially oriented. And they gave him the name "Laboratory of Scientific Student Developments", made a budget of the necessary equipment, The most expensive items were a spectrum analyzer and a table with vacuum tweezers of about 150 thousand rubles, the cost of the project was 300 thousand rubles, and they allocated us only 100 thousand rubles. And I had to update only that without which nothing at all.

How and by what principle is decided how much to allocate a grant remains a mystery, but for many grants where there was a request of 50 - 100 thousand, 300 thousand were allocated, and this is very interesting.
This is approximately what the lab in the province looks like:





And this is an infrared stove, which is dental, is now being converted into an infrared stove for printed circuit boards.



Well, a few shots from the "turbulent" life of the laboratory:

Total

Whether to receive a grant or not to receive a purely personal decision, I hope my article will at least help you decide. Will I again participate in this? Most likely no.