FEATURE
The Future is Now – Electronic Grant Submissions
Movement to Electronic Submissions Radically Changes the Way Federal Applications are Written and Processed
The Federal Government, including NIH, is moving toward the electronic submission
of all grant proposals, and eventually contracts, via the online gateway
at grants.gov (http://grants.gov/). All federal agencies are now required to post their grant opportunities
on grants.gov, and in the not too distant future all grant applications
to the federal government will be electronic.
Finding Grant Opportunities
On the grants.gov website:
> click “Find Grant Opportunities”
> select
options from a series of drop downs to define your interest areas and subscribe to receive email notices of
grant announcements from across the federal government.
BMC Federal Grant
Application Guidelines
To allow time
for internal review and the projected processing through grants.gov, submit applications to SPA:
> 10 business days prior to the deadline
> by 4:30 or 5 PM
local time on the due date. Do not assume that BMC will
able to submit applications in the last five minutes before
the deadline and handle whatever debugging needs to be done.
Plan ahead. If you wait until the last minute, it may not be possible to sumit your application. |
NIH and grants.gov
NIH is implementing an aggressive
timeline to implement the federal mandate.
Some NIH programs are already using this electronic process. NIH (NOT-OD-07-001)
has recently changed its application receipt date schedule .The
gateway to this process is through grants.gov.
Applying For NIH Grants
1. Faculty Registration is Required
For
NIH applications, faculty need to be registered in the NIH eRA Commons
on grants.gov before applying. It is very important that you do not wait until the
last minute to begin the registering process. It doesn't
take long, so why not do it now?
To register, contact Jim Johnson in BMC Sponsored Programs Administration
(SPA) at 4-3698. Ask him to email you the Registration Form and how to
download the required PureEdge and Adobe 7 software. Complete the Registration Form and
email it back to SPA.
2. Plan Ahead: The Submission Process May Be Time-Consuming
The national experience is that the grants.gov
e-system is proving to be much more complex and time-consuming than
the traditional paper application procedure. The process is not intuitive and cannot be completed
at the last minute - it will no longer be possible to work right up
to the deadline! SPA will be offering some grants.gov and NIH eRA workshops later this
year.
The grants.gov system
requires BMC to establish a buffer of time to protect the application
against the agency deadline, as the system may experience technical
difficulties or detect application errors at any point in the submission
process. Applicants cannot assume the first submission will be successful
and must allow time for resubmissions.
"Test Drive" Sample Grant Applications
The NIH eRA website has some sample applications that you can “test
drive” from start to finish to get a feel for the process.
The following websites will provide a very good insight into the
entire process with valuable links along the way.
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/process.htm
The following is from grants.gov: http://www.grants.gov/resources/doc/UserGuide_Applicant.doc
Other helpful web links to get started:
Overview:
Copy attached
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/files/eSub_process_flow14.pdf
grants.gov
Registration checklist
http://www.grants.gov/section3/OrganizationRegCheck.pdf
Applicant FAQs
http://www.grants.gov/help/applicant_faqs.jsp#1
NIH
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/files/countdown_chart.pdf
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/files/nih_transition_plan.pdf
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/process.htm
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/submit_app.htm
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/avoiding_errors.htm
http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/faq_submission.htm.
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