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IMPETUS: Over four years, we championed citizen science across Europe - funding innovative projects and celebrating outstanding work through our accelerator programme and the European Prize for Citizen Science.

Our project in numbers

3

Open Calls for citizen science initiatives focused on UN SDGs, Green Deal Goals, impact, volunteer engagement, EDI, and open data quality.

7

Involved partners

4

European countries

97

Citizen science initiatives were supported to kick-start their projects!

32

Citizen science initiatives were supported, to help them increase their impact!

4

Million, funded by the European Commission

About IMPETUS

IMPETUS advanced citizen science (CS) by broadening access to innovative funding, bringing CS closer to society and policymakers, and highlighting its role in addressing today’s greatest challenges — with a strong focus on the Green Deal and UN SDGs.

How we did this

Open Calls: Three Open Calls (2022–2025) selected CSIs for the Accelerator Programme, awarding €20k to launch 97 new CSIs and €10k to sustain 32 existing ones.

2. Accelerator Programme: Integrated support, training, mentoring, and peer learning to help CSIs contribute to UN SDGs and Green Deal targets and connect with quadruple-helix stakeholders.

3. EU Prize for Citizen Science: Three annual prize categories: the Grand Prize (€60k), the Diversity & Collaboration Award and the Digital Communities Award (€20k each), plus 27 honourable mentions, selected by an independent jury.

4. Citizen Panel: A panel of citizen science experts providing feedback on IMPETUS’s work, helping design our open calls and the IMPETUS accelerator.

5. Policy Engagement: Through horizon scanning, policy briefs, and stakeholder workshops, IMPETUS worked to embed CS data in evidence-based EU policymaking and shape future CS policy.

6. Impact Assessment: Tools to assess CSI and framework impact on Green Deal and SDG targets, with findings feeding into national and EU policy recommendations.