The federal government has been working for quite some time on a standardized electronic method for announcing and accepting proposals to its funding agencies. A web site was created for this purpose called Grants.gov.

To date, the number of federal agencies requiring submission through Grants.gov increases with each round of competition. In August 2005, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced their schedule for accepting applications through this central site. Plans are to accept the standard R01 Research Grant applications solely through Grants.gov beginning with the February 1, 2007, deadline. Current projections indicate that by october 2007 all applications for federal grants will be submitted through Grants.gov.

Since many of the Research Foundation's proposals are to NIH, we became adept at helping our investigators to submit their proposals through Grants.gov. The Research Foundation is prepared to assist you during this transition period; as a full service research administration service, we submit proposals directly to Grants.gov, making the submission process as easy as possible for you. This also eliminates the compatibility problems for Macintosh computer users with Grants.gov and its software. To mitigate the impact of potential delays we recommend that proposals be submitted to Grants.gov at least 1 week prior to the funding agency's deadline.

You will find information on the Research Foundation's web site that provides details about applying through the Research Foundation to Grants.gov and some of the major concerns we have overcome with submitting proposals to Grants.gov.

The presentation is titled "How to submit Grants.gov proposals through the Texas A&M Research Foundation." There is also a list of frequently asked questions and answers on our web site.

Should you have questions or concerns, please contact me at 845-8615 (or jzuber@rf-mail.tamu.edu) or your Research Foundation Proposal Administrator (see list at http://rf-web.tamu.edu/preaward/proposaladm.html).

Sincerely,

Jane Zuber
Associate Vice President
Preaward