Some time ago (last fall) there was a lot of discussion about COS having
made a transition from their standard funding opportunity search tool to
Pivot and the significant increase in cost of the new enhanced
offering.  Many users felt left out in the cold as they either didn't
need the awesome new features it offered or couldn't afford the price
increase.  I'd shared with everyone that we were in discussions with the
COS team on licensing their data to offer through our Kwest product
(similar to the old COS product but we feel more user friendly) and I
said I'd provide an update.  We tried diligently to work with the COS
team assuming they'd see this as an opportunity but we were
unsuccessful.  Once it became apparent that we weren't going to be able
to make this happen we decided to hire a couple of people to generate
our own private data sources.

So, if you're still looking for an affordable tool for faculty and
research admin staff to find funding opportunities I'd encourage you to
check out Kwest by visiting http://moderas.org/Funding-Opportunities and
clicking on the "Start your free 15 day Trial" button. There's no
obligation whatsoever, no credit card information necessary to take it
for a test drive.  our last client test drove it for about 4 hours
before signing up.

I will say we're finding Kwest addresses the biggest issue we've heard
about such tools... that nobody uses them.  Over the last month we've
only seen one Sunday where users from our clients haven't been in the
system searching, checking on search agent results that are emailed to
them, or reviewing update notifications on their saved opportunities so
it's definitely reaching the target audience.

On a related update for those that may not know, the IRIS product was
updated recently as well.  A new company, Cazoodle, took ownership and
updated the user interface so you may want to check them out as well as
a good COS replacement.  Their site is
https://www.grantforward.com/index and they also offer a free trial.

Best regards,
Chris

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