Project

The Volkswagen Foundation is Germany's largest private, non-profit science funding organization. Through its funding activities, the Foundation aims to advance the scientific basis in all disciplines, promote social transformation processes, help shaping Germany's science system and promote dialog between science and society. In doing so, the foundation focuses on funding risk-laden, cross-border, stimulating and structure-shaping research.

Fraunhofer ISI is supporting the Volkswagen Foundation in setting up an impact-oriented monitoring system for its research funding activities. The focus is on research funding within the foundation’s three profile areas (Societal Transformations, Exploration, Understanding Research). The project team together with the foundation will newly develop an overarching impact model, update the existing logic charts of single funding programmes and develop suitable indicators for the different effect levels. The aim is to capture single programme funding and make visible the overall effects of the funding, but also enable internal learning processes.

The particular questions addressed by this project include, in particular, how a flexible monitoring system can be designed in the context of a dynamic funding portfolio and how the effects of exploratory research and unintended effects of funding can be captured/measured.

The impact-oriented monitoring is created co-creatively with the various organizational units of the foundation.