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 application package can be found at http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm and the submission schedule can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/submissionschedule.htm. Examples of completed parent applications can be found in the "Examples" section below.
Grants.gov Reference Materials
Listed below are reference materials which may help you with your proposal application:
You can also visit the Grants.gov "Applicant Resources" page at http://grantsgov.tmp.com/static2007/applicants/app_help_reso.jsp for additional resources and animated tutorials.
Sample Grants.gov PDF Application Packages
Listed below are sample Grants.gov PDF application packages for the three NIH Parent Announcements (you will need the appropriate Adobe Reader software to view and edit these sample packages - see "Software" below):
NIH Parent R01 (PA-07-070)
Sample Grants.gov PDF Application Package
Application Overview
Frequently Used Facts
NIH Parent R21 (PA-09-164)
Sample Grants.gov PDF Application Package
Application Overview
Frequently Used Facts
NIH Parent R03 (PA-09-163)
Sample Grants.gov PDF Application Package
Application Overview
Frequently Used Facts
Software
Listed below are links to the software required to apply for grants via Grants.gov:
Common Errors in Grants.gov Proposal Submissions
To minimizing errors and warnings in Grants.gov proposal submissions, here are some points to keep in mind:
- For an NIH proposal, please be sure to carefully review your assembled application image in the eRA Commons website. We want to be sure that NIH reviewers can see your application when the time comes. Remember: If you are not able to view your assembled application image, NIH will not be able to view it. Making sure that you can view your assembled application image is the ONLY way to be certain it has properly reached NIH and is available for further consideration.
- Only use standard characters and numbers when naming attachments.
- Spaces in attachment names can cause the attachment not to render properly.
- Be aware of any attachment size policies; for example in an NIH proposal, 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.
- Check your attachments. It is recommended that all attachments be created with Adobe and have a .pdf extension.
- For an NIH proposal, make sure that the NIH Commons UserID for the PI has been included in the Key Personnel page of the application.
- For an NIH proposal, refrain from using the role of co-PI/PD on the Key Personnel page of the application.
Help with these or any other Grants.gov issues is available from the Research Administration Office.
