John, I've been the grants officer here for 8 years and I haven't thrown a
proposal out yet.  I keep paper copies of non-funded proposals in my office for
a couple of years, then in a box in a storage room.  Eventually I may send them
to the university's archives.  I don't plan to throw them away, ever--who knows
what sort of inquiry will emerge?

I have some proposals on disk, though that's not a requirement here.  I treat
them the same way.  The oldest ones live on 5 1/4 floppies in WP 4.2,
eventually I suppose they will be too old and obsolete to be recovered.  But
the official copy is on paper.

Bill Campbell
Director, Grants & Research
University of Wisconsin-River Falls