Dear Jen,

I spent half a day last fall Googling other institution's policies in
regards to this. The results of my informal survey are attached.

Our institution follows something very closely to UMich that Bob
outlines below.

1. Starting about a year ago, we request that all proposals be submitted
6 working days in advance (with the assumption that the PI has been
previously working with their analyst to develop their budgets). This
allows for 1 day for the Office of Sponsored Research to do the
administrative review, 2 days for the scientific review in the Vice
Chancellor's office, 1 day for the PI to make corrections and finalize
the proposal, and then theoretically, 2 days for final review and
submission to the agency well in advance of the deadline. This would
allow for troubleshooting any technical difficulties and to get the PIs
used to submitting early for when the NIH grace period ends. (And yes,
the deadline is met by less than half of our PIs....)

2. We guarantee that any proposal that meets our deadlines will be
submitted. Proposals that do not meet our deadlines will be handled on a
first come, first served basis and submission is not guaranteed. (We
used to drop everything for the grant that came in the day of or a few
hours before the deadline.) We still try to submit the proposal no
matter what, and so far have only had one proposal miss the deadline.

3. We tell the PIs that we are here to help them and work through the
technical problems of grant submissions, and that if they give us the
time to do our jobs, we will make their proposals that much stronger. I
tell the PIs that electronic submissions are not as 'forgiving' as paper
submissions and that the proposal can be rejected if there is a document
missing or data entered incorrectly. I give them horror story examples
of close calls (2 seconds before the deadline is our record) and why
other grants were rejected and had to be resubmitted.

Since we have the we-are-here-to-help-you attitude, for the most part
our PIs have been responsive in trying to meet the earlier deadlines. We
figure that if we can get at least half of the PIs to comply with the
deadlines, it will give us time to work on the latecomers applications
too.

Good luck with your policy! Writing it is easy, enforcing it is the hard
part.

Sherie

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On
Behalf Of Robert Beattie
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:07 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] leadtime for review of Grants.gov proposals

I hope other institutions have a policy of just not sending
applications that come after the internal deadline.  More chance for
ours to be successful :)  We will do everything possible to get an
application to the sponsor.  We have a 4 day requirement for the
complete Grants.gov application to be in our server prior to the
sponsor deadline.  If it is there a minuter prior to the deadline, we
will still try to submit it.  Deal with problems later.  However, if
a late arriving submission fails after our best efforts, we do not
take responsibility.

We have had a couple arrive late and have errors.  Luckily NIH allows
late submissions, if the original deadline is met.  I'll bet they
will begin to cut down on this and someday in the near future, will
not allow a late second submission.  The sooner the better.

In the meantime, we explain to PI's that it is in THEIR best
interests to get applications in early as these Agency computer
deadlines are firm.  We can now relate the story of those folks in
Boston, plus a couple of near run submissions here.

Anyone have a case of missing a Grants.gov deadline.  A few of these
to share with PI's would help prove that best interest story.

Bob
xxxxxx@umich.edu

On Nov 28, 2007, at 10:53 AM, Bloomberg, Robert wrote:

But I think the real questions are:

How many PI's get it to you within the number of days set out in your
policy, and

What is your approach if they don't

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org]On Behalf
Of Jon Teuber
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 10:36 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] leadtime for review of Grants.gov proposals

Our office recently instituted a similar policy - three working days
prior to the
deadline date (to give us a full four days when you include the
submission
date).  We didn't survey, but googled policies at other
institutions.  We found
that many use a five-day policy, and several were between 3 and 7 days.

Jon Teuber
Associate Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago

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======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
======================================================================

======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
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