Hi Marcia,

When we consolidated with SPSU we inherited the Hanover contract that they had with them to assist their faculty.  What we discovered very quickly is that the model Hanover uses for coordinating the workflow was not suitable for our needs.  They work with a first in/first out model where you send them something, they put it in their queue, they assign it to someone, they work on it for 2-3 weeks, and then they send it back.  If someone else wants help while they are working on grant proposal #1, they put that in the queue and it sits there until they finish with #1 and then they move on to #2.  If someone else comes along and wants help while they are still working with #1 and sitting on #2, they put it in the queue, then that will sit there until they finish with #1 and #2 unless you tell them to stop working on #1 and skip #3 to the head of the list.  That may be beneficial for a small university without a really robust research portfolio, but if you are in need of a more dynamic model where you have to have proposals being worked on simultaneously this isn't going to be a good fit.  We were constantly having to juggle the queue and it became a logistical nightmare.  Obviously faculty do not want their draft sitting around for weeks waiting on Hanover to get to them, and it just wasn't working.

When the contract came up for renewal Hanover wanted $75,000 for a 2 year extension.  Our then VPR asked for a report showing their ROI in order to gauge exactly how much funding the university had received for its investment.  Their success rate was exactly ZERO, i.e., in the years that they had the contract with SPSU they could not produce any evidence that any SPSU faculty had been successfully funded as a result of their efforts.  Obviously he declined to renew the contract after we got that information.  Between the static model they use for providing writing support AND the lack of success faculty had using their services it didn't make sense to keep throwing good money after bad.

Again, this was *our* experience so YMMV.  I'm sure there are other institutions that they were able to assist.  It just wasn't us.

Hope this helps.

Ms. Natasha Williams, MPA, CRA
Associate Director of Research Development and Strategic Initiatives

Kennesaw State University
Office of Research
585 Cobb Ave NW
Room 3411, MD 0111
Kennesaw, GA 30144
p: 470-578-3365
e: xxxxxx@kennesaw.edu

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