Show me the intrepid soul who sets and strictly enforces a 10 day internal deadline and I will make my pilgrimage to that Campostela of sponsored projects office to praise and learn from this warrior, this visionary, this bodhisattva!

However, for a strict internal deadline to work you need Presidents and Deans willing to take off the gloves, and they won't do that unless the faculty is behind the idea, and the faculty won't be behind the idea unless they are convinced that all this extra time to "review" increases their chances of funding.  So, if all you propose to do is the usual budget and regulatory compliance kind of review, you aren't going to convince the faculty.

Do all grant applicants at your institution read RFA guidelines, follow guidelines during proposal preparation, write well, solicit critiques by experts in their specific area, solicit critiques by other scholars outside their specific area, budget time well enough so that these critiques can actually be used to change the proposal, proofread, and have numerous other grantsmanship skills and common sense?

No?  Then these are the kinds of things that you might promise (if not actually provide) in arguing for strict early internal deadlines.  The full argument will require some elegant math to convince the administration how improving the quality of 500 assistant professor submitted proposals over a 5 year period will result in enough $$ to more than compensate for the 5 full professor proposals who quit and take their grants elsewhere because you refused to sign their late proposals.

Charlie Hathaway

At 04:30 PM 3/7/02 -0500, you wrote:
>Hello All.
>UMass would like to pick your collective brains...   Like many of you, I am sure, we
>are stuggling with limited resources and growing demand for our services.  One area
>that we are exploring is a firm internal receipt deadline for proposals to our
>sponsored research office.  I would appreciate knowing how many of you set a firm
>deadline for your faculty to submit proposals to your office for review & submission
>to the sponsor.
>
>If you do set an internal deadline, what is it?  Do you have a separate policy for
>NSF Fastlane or other electronic proposals?  If you have a firm deadline, do you not
>accept proposals from faculty members if they don't give you the requisite lead
>time, or do you have an exception handling policy?  If so, what is it?
>
>Also, what level of review do you provide on your proposals:  institutional
>compliance, sponsor compliance, or both?  Is the level of review you give a proposal
>related in any way to the amount of time your faculty gives your office to review it
>before it is due to the sponsor?
>
>Are there other "value added" services you provide, such as copying and mailing?
>Again, are these related to how long you are given to review & process a proposal
>before it is due to a sponsor?
>
>If others would like me to share the information I receive, just drop me an email &
>I'll be happy to do so....  Thanks so much for your help and information!
>-jennifer
>--
>Jennifer Donais, CRA
>Assistant Director
>Office of Grant & Contract Administration
>University of Massachusetts
>Amherst, MA 01003
>(413) 545-5888 FAX (413) 577-1595
>http://www.umass.edu/research/ogca
>
>"If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something."
>
>
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