Erasmus+ Sustainability Strategy: How to Write It

The sustainability section is where the majority of Erasmus+ proposals lose points they should not lose — not because the project lacks genuine long-term value, but because applicants do not know how to write it in the language evaluators are trained to recognise.

“The partnership will continue to collaborate after the project” is not a sustainability strategy. Neither is “results will be available on our website.” Evaluators read these phrases hundreds of times and they score accordingly. A strong sustainability strategy is specific, credible, and tied to concrete commitments by named partners — not aspirational intentions. This guide shows you exactly how to write one.

1. What Sustainability Means in Erasmus+

In the Erasmus+ evaluation framework, sustainability refers to the continuation and use of your project’s results after the grant period ends. It is not about environmental sustainability (though that is a separate EU priority). It is about ensuring that the knowledge, tools, methods and changes your project produces do not disappear when the funding stops.

This is assessed as part of the Impact criterion, and evaluators approach it with a simple question: “If we fund this project, will its results still be used in five years?” A proposal that cannot answer this question concretely will always score in the low-to-mid range on Impact, regardless of how strong the project activities are.

2. The Four Types of Sustainability Evaluators Look For

A comprehensive sustainability strategy addresses four dimensions. You do not need to score equally on all four — the relevance of each depends on your project type and sector — but a strong proposal will address at least three of them with specificity.

• Financial sustainability — how will activities or outputs be funded or maintained without EU grant money after the project ends
• Institutional sustainability — how will partner organisations formally embed new practices, methods or tools into their standard operations
• Sustainability of results — how will the intellectual outputs, training resources and knowledge produced remain accessible, usable and up-to-date
• Policy sustainability and scalability — how could your results influence local, national or European policy, or be scaled and transferred to other organisations and contexts

3. Step 1 — Financial Sustainability

This is the most concrete form of sustainability and the one evaluators check most carefully. The question is simple: who pays for this after the grant ends?

A credible financial sustainability strategy names one or more of the following:

• Institutional budget integration — a named partner commits to including the costs of continuing the activity in their annual operational budget from a specific date
• Revenue generation — the training programme or toolkit will be offered to external organisations on a fee basis, with a named partner responsible for delivery
• National or regional co-funding — a partner organisation plans to apply for national public funding to scale or continue the project activities, naming the specific funding source
• Membership or subscription model — results will be maintained through a consortium membership or sector association fee structure
• Follow-up EU project — the consortium plans to apply for a larger follow-up project in a future call, building on the current project’s outputs

4. Step 2 — Institutional Sustainability

Institutional sustainability describes how the changes your project produces become embedded into the standard practice of the participating organisations — not as a separate project activity, but as part of how they operate every day after the grant ends.

For each major outcome your project is designed to produce, ask: which partner organisation will formally embed this into their work, and how?

Strong institutional sustainability statements are specific about three things:

• What is being embedded — the training methodology, the new assessment tool, the revised curriculum, the partnership practice
• How it will be embedded — integrated into the annual staff development calendar, added to the standard service offer, incorporated into onboarding procedures
• When it will happen — within 6 months of project end, from Year 2 of operations, from the next academic year

A useful indicator of institutional sustainability is a formal commitment letter from a named partner organisation, stating their intention to continue using and developing the project’s outputs. Some applicants include these as annexes — even when not formally required, they strengthen credibility significantly.

5. Step 3 — Sustainability of Results

Even the best project results lose value if they become inaccessible after the project ends. Sustainability of results means ensuring that everything your project produces — toolkits, training materials, research reports, methodologies — remains findable, usable and maintained over the long term.

For each intellectual output, address:

• Hosting — where will it be hosted after the project website’s maintenance period? The Erasmus+ Project Results Platform provides long-term discoverability, but additional hosting on sector platforms (EPALE, eTwinning, SALTO toolbox) extends reach
• Maintenance — who is responsible for updating the output as the field evolves? Name the partner and describe the update mechanism
• Licence — Creative Commons or equivalent open licences ensure the output can be freely used, adapted and built upon by others without requiring contact with the project team
• Language access — outputs available in multiple languages are more likely to be used across contexts; confirm which language versions will be maintained

6. Step 4 — Policy Sustainability and Scalability

This is the highest-ambition tier of sustainability, and not every project needs to address it at the same depth. But for KA220 projects especially, demonstrating potential policy influence or scalability beyond the consortium significantly strengthens the Impact section.

Policy sustainability means your results could inform practice or policy beyond your consortium — at local, national or European level. This could mean:

• A policy brief will be submitted to a named national ministry or regulatory body
• Findings will be presented at a national policy forum or consultation process
• A partner organisation with policy influence (a national association, an umbrella body) will advocate for adoption of the project’s methodology

Scalability means your results are designed to be transferable to organisations and contexts beyond the original consortium. Describe how other organisations outside the project could adopt or adapt your outputs — and whether you plan to actively support this through an open-access licence, a train-the-trainers model, or a formal replication guide.

7. Weak vs Strong: Side-by-Side Examples

Here is what the difference between a low-scoring and high-scoring sustainability strategy looks like across each of the four dimensions.

8. Sustainability for KA210: What Is Different

KA210 Small-scale Partnerships operate with smaller budgets, shorter timelines and typically 2–3 partners. Evaluators apply proportionality — they do not expect a KA210 project to produce a comprehensive four-dimensional sustainability strategy. But they do expect something more specific than vague intentions.

For KA210, a credible sustainability section typically needs to address just two dimensions:

• Institutional — what will each partner organisation continue doing as a result of the project? Even a small, specific commitment scores better than a general aspiration
• Results — where will outputs be hosted long-term? Open access on the Erasmus+ Results Platform is the minimum; additional hosting on sector platforms strengthens the case

The strongest KA210 sustainability section also mentions the intention to build on the project with a future larger application — this is a brief sentence but signals genuine ambition and is viewed positively regardless of project size.

9. Most Common Sustainability Mistakes

Intentions instead of commitments. “Partners are committed to using the results” and “the project will have lasting impact” are intentions, not commitments. Every sustainability statement should describe a specific action, by a named organisation, with a timeframe. If you cannot answer “who will do what by when,” the statement is too vague.

Relying entirely on the project website. Project websites are typically maintained for 1–3 years post-project at most. They are not a sustainability strategy on their own. Name the long-term hosting platforms for each output specifically — and confirm that at least one partner is responsible for maintenance.

Financial sustainability described as “seeking further funding.” Saying the consortium will apply for more funding after the project is not financial sustainability — it is financial uncertainty. Evaluators treat it as a red flag, not a strength. Replace it with specific budget integration plans, revenue models or named national funding sources.

No connection to the project’s actual outputs. A generic sustainability section that could apply to any project scores poorly. Your sustainability strategy should refer specifically to your outputs by name and describe how each one will continue to be used. Generic statements signal that the sustainability section was written as a formality rather than a plan.

Sustainability disconnected from the rest of the proposal. Evaluators cross-check the sustainability section against the work plan, the dissemination plan and the impact section. If your work plan has no sustainability-focused activities — no replication guide, no train-the-trainers session, no handover planning — the sustainability claims in the narrative are not credible.

10. Sustainability Strategy Checklist

• ✅ Financial sustainability addressed — named partner, specific mechanism, not just “seeking further funding”
• ✅ Institutional sustainability addressed — what will each partner embed, how and by when
• ✅ Each intellectual output has a named long-term hosting platform beyond the project website
• ✅ At least one output published under open-access Creative Commons licence
• ✅ Named partner responsible for maintaining and updating each output
• ✅ Policy influence or scalability described — named bodies, events or replication mechanisms
• ✅ Follow-up project mentioned if applicable
• ✅ Sustainability section refers to specific named outputs — not generic “project results”
• ✅ Sustainability activities reflected in the work plan (not just in the narrative)
• ✅ KA210 proportionality respected — 2 dimensions addressed concisely rather than 4 superficially