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With the ever-increasing use of the internet in our daily lives, many federal and non-federal agencies are looking towards the future and requiring electronic submissions of grant proposals. This electronic submission may be as easy as e-mailing the proposal to the agency, or it may be as challenging as learning a whole new software system in order to submit proposals. Irregardless of the method of electronic submission, keep in mind that a hard copy of all proposals need to be routed through the proper channels for signatures before the electronic proposal is sent to the agency.
One of the most common electronic proposal submission applications is Grants.gov. Here is some information on the Grants.gov website, which is located at http://grants.gov/.
What is Grants.gov?
Grants.gov was established as a governmental resource named the E-Grants Initiative, part of the President's 2002 Fiscal Year Management Agenda to improve government services to the public: "Agencies will allow applicants for federal Grants to apply for and ultimately manage grant funds online through a common web site, simplifying grants management and eliminating redundancies."
The concept has its origins in the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999, also known as Public Law 106-107. P.L. 106-107 was enacted in November of that year to:
- Improve the effectiveness and performance of federal financial assistance programs.
- Simplify federal assistance application and reporting requirements.
- Improve the delivery of services to the public.
- Facilitate greater coordination among those responsible for delivering the services.
Today, Grants.gov is the one-source access to standardized grant information, application packages and processes for more than 1,000 federal grant programs, across all 26 federal grant-making agencies.
Grants.gov enables grant-making agencies and the grant community to come together to make grants management easier and more efficient for everyone. State, local and tribal governments, colleges and universities, research institutions, non-profits and other organizations will now have the ability to find $400 billion in annual grants from over 1000 different grant programs at one online location.
The search capabilities that are built into the site make finding grants faster and researching grants more efficient. By subscribing to the email update service, when new grants matching your specified interests are posted, email notifications are sent to the subscriber—including the title, the agency name and a link which can take them right to the grant. These features make keeping on top of newly available grants of interest to grant applicant organizations a matter of minutes a day.
The Grants.gov application process eliminates the need to learn and comply with multiple agency specific system requirements. One registration is all that is needed to apply to all Federal grant opportunities. Additionally, electronic applications that can be downloaded to any computer, online user support tools and personalized assistance from a dedicated Customer Support team, all come together–making it easier to apply for grants.
Simplifying the grant application process saves both applicants and agencies the expense and time associated with traditional paper-based grant applications.
The Grants.gov website helps applicants, with an intuitive website interface and enhanced search features, easily find and use grant information across all grant categories and agencies.
Electronic grant application processing simplifies the grant application process by reducing paperwork through downloadable and fillable forms, auto-populated data, error checks, email notifications and online support.
Grants.gov currently gets 1.5 million visitors a week and distributes more than a million weekly emails to subscribers of its grant bulletins.
Below is a link to a Grants.gov brochure which provides a good overview of this website:
Funding Opportunity Announcements
An important procedural change with the use of Grants.gov is that all applications must be submitted in response to a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). A Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is Grants.gov’s terminology for what was formerly known as a Program Announcement or a Request for Application.
But what if I am applying for an investigator-initiated grant, which never use to have a Program Announcement number? NIH and other HHS Agencies have developed omnibus Parent announcements for use by applicants who wish to submit what were formerly termed “unsolicited” or "investigator-initiated" applications. Responding to such an omnibus or umbrella Parent FOA ensures that the correct application package is used and enables NIH to receive the application from Grants.gov.
Finding grants, and/or Funding Opportunity Announcement numbers, is as simple as using the “Find Grant Opportunities” options on Grants.gov. As soon as discretionary grant programs are announced by federal agencies, they are posted on Grants.gov and available for review. After you receive your search results, you can link to the synopses of the grant opportunities which provide important information about each grant and quick links to the full announcements and application packages.
This allows you to find out quickly if the grant satisfies your needs and provides all the necessary information you will need to apply for these opportunities.
There are many ways to find grants using Grants.gov. You can search by agency or sub-agency, date range, funding activity category or even by your eligibility. You can even request that grant notifications be emailed to you. The email notification service allows you to sign-up for specific grant notifications by agency, within a particular category or eligibility.
Once you have found a grant of interest, you can click on the “How to Apply” button at the top of each grant synopsis section to find the appropriate application package and method of application submission. Or, you can look up the appropriate application package at:
www.grants.gov/applicants/apply_for_grants.jsp. If you are interested in applying to an NIH Parent Announcements, the Parent Announcement number and submission schedule can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/submissionschedule.htm.
Reference Materials
Listed below are reference materials which may help you with your proposal application:
Examples
Listed below are links to sample Grants.gov PureEdge application packages (you will need the PureEdge software to view these sample packages - see "Software" below):
Software
Listed below are links to the software required to apply for grants via Grants.gov:
Microsoft Windows Vista users: Please note that PureEdge does not work with Microsoft Windows Vista at this time.
Avoid Common Errors in PureEdge Packages
To minimizing errors and warnings in PureEdge submissions, users should:
- Be aware that at this time, the Microsoft Vista operating system as well as Microsoft Office 2007 are not compatible with the Grants.gov application packages.
- Only use standard characters and numbers when naming attachments. Some NIH solicitations warn that spaces in attachment names can cause the attachment not to render properly.
- Be aware of the attachment size policies NIH has in place; for example an abstract can only be 30 lines, a project narrative can only be 2 or 3 sentences, and the research plan length is dictated in the opportunity instructions.
- Add the correct University of North Dakota DUNS number (102280781) to the application.
- Check attachments. NIH only accepts attachments that are created with Adobe and a .pdf extension (except for subaward budgets which must show an extension of .xfd).
- Verify that the NIH Commons UserID for the PI has been included in the Key Personnel page of the application.
- Review the budget to make sure that the personnel include effort for each year.
- Refrain from using the role of co-PI/PD with an NIH proposal.
Help with these or any other Grants.gov issues is available from the Research Administration Office.
Transition to Adobe Forms
Grants.gov deployed an updated system on September 4, 2007 that incorporates new search functionality powered by Google™ technology and allows for the use of fillable Adobe forms®. Although some Grants.gov Adobe forms are now available for agency use, Grants.gov is still awaiting the final Adobe forms to complete the SF424 (R&R) form set used by some electronic application submissions. Once Grants.gov delivers the full set of Adobe forms, the specific agencies will need to test and make any necessary adjustments prior to their use. This means that Grants.gov will continue to use the PureEdge™ forms at least through the first part of 2008.
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