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To: All Faculty, Deans and Department Administrators.
From: Kenneth J. Soprano, Ph.D. Re: Grants.Gov and Revised Grant Submission Procedure
Date: March 20, 2006
Over the past few months there has been a great
deal of information and misinformation circulated about grant.gov and
electronic transmission of grant proposals to federal agencies. The purpose of
this memo is to review some of this information and notify all of you of the
procedures which our office will use to submit grants via the system that has
been established by the federal government. Please understand that to a certain
extent, this is a work in progress and is likely to change as the system is
used by all of us “in the field.” The goal of my office and staff has been to
make this transition as painless as possible for the investigator. We will
continue to review the grant submission process and revise our internal
procedures to achieve this goal. We welcome feedback and comments from you!
Background
- OMB guidance - By the end of FY 2006 75% of
proposal submissions to most federal agencies will be via grants.gov (100%
in FY 2007).
- The grants.gov system is still in
relative infancy and is experiencing associated growing pains: servers cannot
handle a large volume of proposal submissions at one time; it frequently takes
many attempts to submit a proposal (i.e. log in, submit, receive confirmation);
for technical reasons unknown, the grants.gov system “freezes up” and
access is not possible (sometimes for days).
- As of now, grants.gov is merely a
standardized proposal submission mechanism. Once submitted, the proposals are
transferred to the appropriate federal agency. Most agencies will convert the
proposals to their own grants management systems (FastLane, NIH Commons, IIPS (DOE), etc.).
- NIH has added an additional required step – once
the grants.gov submission is converted to NIH commons, within two days
both the PI and the Signing Official (SO) notification of this requirement to
the PI and SO for each proposal. The December 1, 2005 NIH SBIR/STTR submissions
was the first time this procedure was used.
- For all submissions, the date/time the proposal is received by grants.gov is
considered the official proposal receipt date. Grants.gov does a cursory
check to make sure all the sections are completed. When the proposals are reviewed
by the respective agencies, if a problem is encountered applicants will be
given the opportunity to make corrections. HOWEVER, if the corrections
are not submitted by the ORIGINAL due date, the proposal may be considered late. NIH has confirmed this policy; NSF is formulating its policy.
Solution
- PIs making last-minute proposal submissions risk
running into problems with grants.gov and risk non-acceptance by funding
agencies because of lateness. This scenario would be especially aggravated when
many proposals are due at the same time, e.g. NIH standard deadlines, NSF
CAREER deadlines, NSF submission windows, overlapping agency due dates.
- To ensure properly completed proposals are
received at agencies on time, OVPR should be able to submit grants.gov proposals at least three working days before the due date.
- Our office hours will remain Monday-Friday, 8 AM
to 5 PM to assist in any way possible during those times only.
- Grants.gov is the new world order. Temple’s
proposal/research volume is only going to increase.
NEW PROCEDURE EFFECTIVE MAY 1, 2006
- Grants.gov proposal submissions – fully completed
proposals with a signed SPAF (approval form) must be received in OVPR a minimum
of five working days prior to the agency deadline.
- All other proposal submissions – fully completed
proposals with a signed SPAF (approval form) must be received in OVPR a minimum
of three working days prior to the agency deadline.
Proposals not meeting the above submission
criteria run the risk of not being submitted.