Parallel Sessions IV – 4.3 Open their minds, open their hearts, open their checkbooks: Convincing stakeholders to fund citizen science

This interactive session will introduce the audience to the multitude of ways that citizen science practices can be used to enhance research and engagement with societal actors within the quadruple helix (Government, Universities, Industry, and Civil society). However, with this flexibility comes some complexity in how to pitch your project and how to approach a variety of potential funders or stakeholders.

This session will combine narrative building, and stakeholder engagement techniques to provide participants with the mindset of how to approach different funding bodies. Participants will be introduced to some citizen science case studies as potential funding bodies. Then in groups, they will develop a pitch for a designated citizen science initiative to present to a “funding board”- consisting of workshop facilitators- to help develop skills from each other and gain confidence in pitching to multiple stakeholder groups.