A request was made for scary stories of missed grants.gov deadlines (to share with professors to urge punctuality).  I have never missed a deadline, but I have a related story.  We recently submitted a proposal via grants.gov and made a mistake with one of the attachments (we attached one item twice, and omitted an item we were supposed to attach, but by coincidence the twice-attached item contained much of the same info as the omitted item).  We discovered the mistake the day after submission, and contacted the agency to ask if we could replace the omitted item.  They took a couple of days to answer us, and the answer was no.  However, they agreed to review the proposal "as received," so we are hopeful that we'll still be OK since the required content is all there, though not presented as we had planned.

An apology was made to us regarding taking so long to give us a verdict, and we were told it was because lengthy discussions had been held about a proposal submitted 20 seconds after the grants.gov deadline.  We were told that the 20-seconds-late proposal (from some other institution) would not be reviewed at all, and that we were fortunate that at least ours would be reviewed "as received" since it was on time.

The system certainly seems quite rigid, and professors need to know that, despite how friendly they might feel with program officers, there is no room for negotiation about timing of submission or about having the right components.  I think there is still a bit of variation among agencies, but the trend is for ever more strictness.

Landy

__________________________
Landy C. Johnson, MPA, Ph.D.
Director of Grant Development
Assumption College, Alumni Hall 024
500 Salisbury St.
Worcester, MA  01609-1296
(508)767-7666
xxxxxx@assumption.edu
http://www.assumption.edu/research

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