Sponsored Research Services RIT Researcher News

Over the past few years, most federal agencies have migrated their proposal submission functions to grants.gov, which is intended to be a universal portal for all federal grant making. For a number of reasons, the grants.gov system has experienced problems that threaten the timely submission of proposals.

Sponsoring agencies are aware of this problem. Over the past few months, I have observed the following:

• An increase in the number of system issues and the length of time it takes for agencies to pick up proposals submitted through grants.gov. In some cases, agencies have refused to accept timely submissions due to system problems.
• The proliferation of alternative submission vehicles – generally home grown systems that follow the grants.gov format. These are new and have kinks of their own.

For these reasons, I think it is prudent to have electronic submissions ready to go at least a full day in advance – especially for systems other than NSF’s FastLane.