When Grant Funding Meets Luck: Would a Lottery Make It Fairer?

A few weeks ago, I shared something on LinkedIn that surprised a few people — and honestly, I'm still thinking about it myself.

The European Commission is currently exploring a radical shift in how Horizon Europe research grants are awarded. And I don’t use the word “radical” lightly.

The idea? Introduce a lottery system to decide who gets funding.

Only proposals that pass a certain quality threshold would be entered into the draw. But from there, chance could play a role in selecting which projects receive funding.

From Peer Review to Probability?

At first glance, it sounds absurd. Isn’t research funding supposed to be based on merit? On rigorous peer review? On choosing the best ideas?

And yet, the more I thought about it, the more I understood why this is being considered:

• Reviewers are overwhelmed.

• Disciplinary bias is real.

• Review processes are slow, inconsistent, and often opaque.

  
  

So would a lottery actually be more fair?

I put up a little poll on LinkedIn to see what others thought.

Here’s how it turned out (small sample, but interesting nonetheless):

🟢 30% voted yes — it’s fairer and faster

🟡 60% voted maybe — it depends on safeguards

🔴 10% voted no — it undermines academic standards

Not a definitive answer, of course. But it does show the ambivalence many of us feel.

What Would This Mean for Grant Writing?

As someone who works closely with researchers on writing proposals, I can’t help but wonder:

If selection becomes partially random, how do we adapt?

Do we still strive for the perfect narrative?

Or do we focus more on clarity and memorability — ensuring the proposal remains in the mind, even if the final decision comes down to chance?

Maybe the real shift is this:

We write to meet the threshold, but also to endure the uncertainty.

Whether or not the lottery model is implemented, it’s clear that funding systems are evolving. As writers and researchers, we need to stay current with the latest developments.

So What Now?

Let’s see whether this new funding model actually gets implemented or not. But in some ways, that’s not the most important part.

Because one thing is already true: peer review often feels like a lottery. Especially when success rates are as low as 3 percent, which is common in many major funding schemes.

Just calculate how often you would need to submit an application to once get it through and funded. That number alone can feel disheartening. But it also offers a mindset shift.

If success is partially random, then the best thing you can do is increase your number of entries. This doesn’t mean writing 100 different proposals. It means being strategic with the one you’ve already written.

My advice? Always apply to more than one funding body. You’ve already done the hard work of developing a proposal. So reuse it. Reframe it. Adjust the title. Tailor it to a different agency. Even if the call states that your proposal must be exclusive, there are often ways to modify and adapt it sufficiently to fit elsewhere.

This isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about protecting your time, your livelihood, and your ability to build a sustainable research career.

Funding decisions can be life-changing. But we also have to find ways to disentangle our worth from them. If the process includes an element of luck, let’s stop pretending it’s fully merit-based. And let’s stop treating rejections as a personal failure.

Instead, we can choose to keep applying, keep refining, and keep showing up — not because we’re guaranteed success, but because it’s the only way to stay in the game.

A Final Thought

We can’t control every system. But we can support each other in navigating them, with more clarity, more honesty, and a bit more community.

If you're working on a proposal right now and feeling unsure (especially about how to write for a system that may be changing), you're not alone.

Inside the EMERGE Co-Writing Community, we explore exactly these questions. We don't have all the answers, but we write through the uncertainty together.

Lottery or not, your writing still matters.

Warmly,

Melanie