The funding under EXIST Women is applied for by the higher education institution or non-university research establishment.

The following tasks have to be completed:

  • The higher education or research institution needs to develop a process for the application and selection of aspiring female entrepreneurs.
  • The applicant institution needs to develop an action plan for the support of female entrepreneurs, which includes all the instruments the institution plans to provide during the project period. This plan can make use of existing formats, which will be improved and enhanced during the funding period, and newly developed formats, which didn’t previously exist in the institution. It is important for the measures to specifically focus on the support of female entrepreneurs.
  • As the applicant institution submits its application, it needs to name a project director who is in charge of coordinating the cohort and communicating with the project management agency. This could be a person with a background in startup coaching.
  • The startup network needs to launch a call for applications for female entrepreneurs and/or women who are highly motivated to start their own business or who have a concrete business idea.
  • In parallel, the institution needs to contact business mentors (either in the private sector or in their own institution) who are to support the aspiring female entrepreneurs. In the early stages of the project, it can be helpful to recruit mentors who have just started a business themselves, persons the budding entrepreneurs can relate to. This can be done by the institution setting up either its own network of mentors or using an existing one.
  • The institution needs to select the participants. The approval period and the first months into the project can be used for the acquisition process, ensuring that the institution can provide the names of the participants to the project management agency two to no more than four months after the start of the project. The mentors who are to support each participant are also to be named at this point in time.

The project management agency is organising several online information sessions (roadshows) on EXIST Women between July and September this year, during which it will answer questions on the application process.

Application deadlines

  • Applications can be submitted from the moment the guideline is published up until 30 September 2023. The applications will then be scrutinised and granted. The earliest date for the start of the funding period is 1 October 2023.

Completing and submitting the application documents

The application itself needs to be submitted via the electronic electronic 'easy online' form system for applications, offers and project sketches. Select ‘EXIST Women’ as the funding area.

In order to submit an electronic application, you need to upload the application documents in the form of a Word file, which you need to have completed and saved without having changed its structure. Signatures are only required on the printed version of the attachments. The application and selection concept, the action plan, the attachments, etc. can be submitted separately as PDF files.
In addition, all original application documents need to be submitted in their original paper form in one copy with a legally binding signature by mail to the address below:

Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Projektträger Jülich (PtJ)
Berlin offices
PO Box 610247
10923 Berlin

Information hotline: +49(0)30 20199-411
Email: ptj-exist-women@fz-juelich.de