Coordinator

The coordinator is a beneficiary like the others, with one additional job: it is the consortium's single point of contact with the funding body. It submits the proposal, signs first, receives the money, distributes it to the partners, collects and consolidates the reports, and handles every formal exchange with the project officer.

The cash flow runs through it, and that is the part partners underestimate. Pre-financing arrives centrally and is passed on according to the consortium agreement, not according to who needs it. A coordinator that is slow, disorganised or financially fragile leaves everyone else funding the project from their own balance sheets for months.

The administrative load is heavy and continuous: partner chasing, timesheet or deliverable collection, amendments, reporting periods, review meetings. Experienced consortia budget real coordination effort (often a full work package with a dedicated project manager) and the ones that do not tend to discover the cost in month eight.

Coordinating is also the role with the most influence. The coordinator shapes the proposal, allocates the budget between partners, chairs the governance body and holds the relationship with the project officer. Partners who complain about their share are usually complaining about a decision taken during proposal writing by the organisation that held the pen.

Changing coordinator mid-project is possible but expensive. It requires an amendment and the agreement of the consortium, and it typically happens only when the original coordinator has failed. For a first EU project, joining someone else's consortium as a partner and coordinating the second one is the conventional and sensible order.