Finding the right cascade funding call used to mean opening a string of browser tabs, reading through dense eligibility criteria, cross-referencing thematic scopes, and manually eliminating non-fits one by one. For most innovation professionals, that process takes the better part of a morning — and still leaves room for error.
The Cascade Funding Matcher was built to change that. Here’s exactly how it works.
The problem with manual search
Cascade funding — sometimes called Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) — is one of the most accessible routes to EU innovation funding for SMEs, startups, and research organisations. But the calls are fragmented across multiple programmes: Horizon Europe, Digital Europe, EIC, and others. Each has its own eligibility requirements, geographic restrictions, thematic focus areas, and funding caps.
Searching manually means visiting CORDIS, the Funding and Tenders portal, individual programme hubs, and often running separate Google searches on top of that. Even experienced grant professionals spend between one and three hours building a shortlist for a single client — and the main activity is elimination: ruling out calls that are closed, geographically restricted, or simply not a fit for the organisation in question.
That’s not analysis. That’s filtering. And filtering is exactly what Cascade Funding using AI will do for you.
How the Matcher works: step by step
Step 1 — Organisation profile
You begin by describing your organisation. This can be done manually (sector, country, technology, stage, number of employees, type of entity) or by pasting your website URL — the AI extracts the relevant profile information automatically.
The richer the profile, the more precise the matching. Providing specifics — what your technology actually does, what kind of funding you’re looking for (grant, blended finance, equity-free), what stage of development you’re at — directly improves the quality of results.
Step 2 — Legal eligibility check
Before any scoring begins, the Matcher runs a legal eligibility check against every active cascade funding call in its database. It assesses hard criteria: entity type (SME, startup, research body, non-profit), country of registration, project stage requirements, and any programme-specific restrictions.
Crucially, the Matcher doesn’t hide non-eligible calls — it shows you the full picture. Calls that don’t meet your eligibility criteria appear clearly labelled as non-matches, alongside a plain-language explanation of exactly why they don’t qualify. This matters in practice: instead of reading through pages of call documentation only to find a disqualifying criterion buried at the end, you get the answer immediately and can move on with confidence.
Step 3 — AI scoring
For the calls that pass eligibility, the Matcher applies a scoring model across three dimensions:
- Domain alignment — how closely the call’s thematic focus matches your organisation’s sector and activity
- Technology match — whether the specific technologies or methods you work with are relevant to what the call is looking for
- Organisational fit — how well your size, structure, and stage correspond to the typical profile the call is designed to support
Each dimension contributes to an overall score out of 100. The results are ranked from highest to lowest, so the most relevant opportunities appear at the top.
Step 4 — Strategic Recommendations
A score alone doesn’t tell you what to do next. Each result in the Matcher comes with a short strategic note that covers three things:
- Why it’s a strong match — what’s working in your favour based on your profile
- Key challenges — what the main obstacles to a successful application are likely to be
- What you might need — whether the call typically requires consortium partners, specific technical capabilities, or a particular type of project structure
This is the layer that turns a list into a brief. Instead of spending time reading through full call documentation before you know whether a call is worth pursuing, you get a structured summary that lets you make that decision in seconds.
What the output looks like: a real example
Let’s take a concrete case. An organisation submits the following profile:
Spanish ICT SME, 12 employees, cybersecurity focus — specifically compliance tooling for the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). Looking for non-dilutive grant funding to accelerate product development and reach new markets.
The Matcher returns several results across the full call database. The top match is the SECURE First Open Call, with a score of 72/100.
The breakdown:
Domain alignment: high — the call explicitly targets CRA-relevant cybersecurity solutions
Technology match: strong — compliance tooling is within scope
Organisational fit: good — SMEs with under 50 employees are the primary target beneficiary
Strategic note: “Strong fit based on CRA compliance focus and SME profile. Main challenge: calls in this programme typically require a clear go-to-market plan for the EU market. Consider framing your application around market expansion, not just product development. No consortium required at first stage.”
Further down the results, a call appears labelled as a non-match — for example, a cleantech-focused open call targeting large industrial consortia. Rather than simply disappearing from the list, it’s shown with a clear explanation: “Not eligible — this call requires a minimum consortium of three legal entities from different EU member states. Your profile indicates a single-entity application.” One sentence. No ambiguity. No time wasted.
That combination — ranked matches at the top, non-matches explained below — gives you a complete map of the landscape in a single view.
Total time from profile input to full results: under 90 seconds.
What the Matcher is (and what it isn’t)
The Matcher is:
- A discovery and prioritisation tool for active cascade funding calls
- An AI eligibility checker across every open call in the database
- A ranked, scored shortlist tailored to your organisation’s profile
- A source of strategic context to help you decide what’s worth pursuing
- Free to use — three searches, no credit card required
The Matcher isn’t:
- A proposal writing tool
- A full technical assessment of your project
- A replacement for the expertise of a grant consultant
- A guarantee of funding eligibility or application success
What it does do is eliminate the hours of preliminary work that currently precede all of that.
Try it yourself
Describe your organisation, run the eligibility check, and see which active cascade funding calls are actually worth your time.
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