Chapter 7 - Submitting the Proposal
The Proposal Review and Approval Process
Generally, the first step in initiating the internal proposal review/approval process is when the Principal Investigator submits a draft budget and budget justification to the appropriate Grants and Contract Specialist (GCS) at SPS. Draft budgets should be submitted at least 10 working days in advance of the sponsor's deadline. In addition to providing the draft budget and budget justification, Principal Investigators should be prepared to provide the GS with information on all personnel included on the budget. If the proposal is in response to a special solicitation or RFP and the Principal Investigator did not obtain the solicitation from SPS, a copy or website link should be sent to SPS with the draft budget.
Once the draft budget has been approved, the Principal Investigator must obtain necessary approvals by the cognizant department chair(s), dean(s), Organized Research Unit (ORU) directors if ORUs are involved in the proposal, and by the Provost if a new academic program is to be established. This is accomplished by completing the Request for Approval of Sponsored Program form which is available online here. The approval form is available in Word, MAC, and iPDF formats and may also be completed electronically through a web-based Electronic Proposal System (EPS). Questions regarding the form may be answered by contacting the appropriate Grant and Contract Specialist or Grant and Contract Administrator. A list of contacts is available here.
After completing all items, the Principal Investigator should obtain initials of all individuals listed as co-investigators in Section 28. The form should then be routed either by hardcopy or electronically via the EPS system along with a copy of the completed proposal to the department chair(s) and dean(s) of the academic units being credited in Section 28. Once all appropriate approvals are obtained, the proposal and completed approval form may be submitted to SPS for final review and submission to the sponsor.
Department chairs, ORU directors, deans, the Provost and SPS have the following responsibilities in the review and approval process:
- Department chairs certify that the effort proposed by faculty members in their departments is compatible with the balance of their ongoing departmental responsibilities, that available departmental space and facilities are adequate for the department's role in the proposed project, that any proposed commitment of cost sharing by the department is acceptable and will be met, that the project is consistent with departmental programs and objectives, and that the credit for the project which is assigned to the department is appropriate for the degree of departmental participation in the project.
- ORU directors certify that any ORU resources committed to the proposed project will be provided in the event of an award, and that the share of credit for the project assigned to the ORU is appropriate for the ORU's level of participation.
- Deans review and confirm the certifications by departmental chairs and ORU directors for whom they have cognizance, certify that any School or Faculty resources committed to the proposed project will be provided in the event of an award, that the assignments of credit for the project are appropriate, that the required Annual Financial Disclosure form (formerly known as SUNY-2-UB) has been submitted and reviewed, and that submission to the sponsor is appropriate.
- The Provost, in the event that activities included in the proposal involve the establishment of a new academic program, certifies that the proposed academic program is consistent with the University's academic plan and has been approved for implementation.
- Sponsored Projects Services reviews the proposal to ensure that it conforms with the policies of the University, the fiscal agent, and with sponsor regulations and requirements.
Authorized Signatures
Each proposal must be signed by a representative of the University's fiscal agent. Some sponsors also require signature by the Principal Investigator or another University official. The cognizant Grant and Contract Administrator is authorized to sign on behalf of the University's fiscal agent; the President, the Vice President for Research, or the Assistant Vice President for Sponsored Programs Administration is authorized to sign on behalf of the University. Proposals signed only by the Principal Investigator are not official submissions by the University or any of its fiscal agents, and the University is not obliged to accept any award which results from such proposals.
Transmission to the Sponsor
Deadlines
Most sponsors have established dates by which proposals must be received or postmarked in order to be considered during a particular review cycle. When these dates are firm and must be met precisely, they are referred to as deadlines. A receipt deadline is the date by or before which proposals must be received by the sponsor. A postmark deadline is the date on or before which the proposal must be postmarked by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Note: Private express carriers are not acceptable alternatives to the USPS for postmark deadlines, nor is a date from a postal meter an acceptable alternative for a USPS postmark. So-called target dates have previously been treated as soft, imprecise deadlines. They are dates by which the sponsor would like to receive proposals and begin preparing them for the review process. National Science Foundation often treats target dates as hard deadlines. Therefore, Principal Investigators are encouraged to submit their proposals by the target date indicated in the program announcement.
Note: Sponsors are serious about announced deadline dates. Proposals which are received after the deadline or target date will either be returned or held for the next review cycle. Occasionally, a sponsor will agree to accept a proposal after a deadline. If such arrangements have been made with the sponsor, inform SPS of the name of the sponsor's representative who made the commitment to accept the proposal.
Number of Copies of the Proposal to be Submitted
Until recently, almost every sponsor required the submission of one signed original and one or more exact photocopies of the proposal. Under Congressional mandate, Federal sponsor's are developing electronic proposal submissions, designed, among other reasons, to eliminate the need for mailing paper proposals. At this time, several Federal sponsors including National Science Foundation, CDMRP, and US Dept of Education have functioning electronic systems. For proposals which still must be submitted in paper form, the Principal Investigator should deliver to SPS the original proposal plus the number of photocopies required by the sponsor, plus two additional copies for post-award administration. The number of copies required by each sponsor will be found in the sponsor's proposal preparation guidelines.
Some sponsors (National Institutes of Health, for example) make additional copies from the original proposal. Therefore, only material that can be photocopied (i.e. graphs, diagrams, tables and charts in black ink) should be included in the application. Glossy photographs or other materials (such as color images of gels or micrographs) that cannot be photocopied must be submitted as appendix material.
Copying of the proposal is the responsibility of the Principal Investigator and is not among the services that SPS regularly provides. Principal Investigators should not rely on having their proposals copied by SPS.
Binding
Proposals should be delivered to SPS unbound. Each copy should be either paper clipped or banded, not stapled.
Each proposal must be signed by SPS, and copies of the signed pages usually must be substituted for unsigned pages in each copy. In addition, it is not unusual for SPS to find and correct errors in proposals. Corrected pages must also be substituted. Substitution of pages is either not possible or very difficult if the copies are bound or stapled. Also, bound copies are very difficult for sponsors to handle, and many explicitly state that proposals should not be bound.
Delivery to the Sponsor
SPS will package the original proposal and the required number of copies and have it delivered by an appropriate carrier to the sponsor.
The preferred method of delivery is by first class U.S. Mail. This is not only the least expensive method, but also the most reliable.
Express Deliveries
Any materials which require express delivery to a sponsor and are delivered to SPS before 10:00 a.m. on the day before the sponsor's deadline, will be deposited with the express carrier by SPS. Materials delivered to SPS after 10:00 a.m. will be processed by SPS and returned to the Principal Investigator for deposit with the express carrier.
When considering an express delivery, Principal Investigators should keep the following in mind:
- Carriers provide a very limited guarantee of on-time delivery of express packages. In the event of late delivery, the express carrier refunds only the express charges--not the amount of the proposed budget or any other value which might be assigned to the package;
- Express carriers ship by air, using their own aircraft which are as subject to the vagaries of weather and equipment failure as scheduled airlines;
- SPS ships several hundred pieces per year by express carriers and has found that every express carrier has a finite rate of failure to deliver within twenty-four hours. Therefore, every express shipment is a gamble;
The federal government will accept late delivery by an express carrier only if it is to the government's advantage to do so. The University, therefore, has no right of appeal if the express carrier makes a late delivery. However, the government is required to accept submissions which arrive late if they have been mailed (i.e., via USPS) registered or certified, five working days prior to the sponsor's deadline, or express mailed (via USPS) two working days prior to the sponsor's deadline.
Multiple Submissions
Generally, it is acceptable to submit the same proposal simultaneously to more than one sponsor, provided that multiple submission is not barred by the policies of any one of the sponsors. Examples of such policies are:
- Submission of identical proposals to one or more components of the Public Health Service (including NIH) is not allowed. In addition, the NIH will not accept similar grant applications with essentially the same research focus from the same applicant organization.
- Proposals to the National Science Foundation?s Biological Sciences Directorate cannot be duplicates of proposals to any other Federal agency for simultaneous review. The only exception to this policy is for proposals submitted by beginning investigators who have not been a PI or Co-PI on a Federally funded award
For those cases in which multiple submission is allowed, information must be included in the proposal concerning other sponsors to which a proposal has been submitted.
For most investigators, multiple submissions will be prevented by the lack of programmatic overlap between sponsors. When proposals are submitted to more than one sponsor, each sponsor should receive a proposal which conforms to its own form and format requirements. Each of the multiple submissions must also be fully approved by SPS.
Ethical considerations, as well as law, proscribe acceptance of awards from more than one sponsor for the same work. This is true whether the proposals which elicit the awards have the same title or not, or whether the two awards are administered by the same fiscal agent. It is, of course, always possible to accept awards from more than one sponsor for different aspects of one multifaceted project.
NIH Peer Review Process
After a proposal has been submitted to a sponsor, the proposal then starts through the sponsor's review process. The NIH Center for Scientific Review has provided a summary of NIH proposal review process, which is located at here
Declined Proposals
Less than one-third of sponsored program proposals are funded on the first submission. Principal Investigators should not, therefore, be discouraged if a proposal is declined by a sponsor. Because even the most successful applicants receive their share of rejections, Principal Investigators who succeed at securing external funding also accept rejection as part of the natural cycle of events in seeking sponsorship. The appropriate response is reflective persistence.
Upon being notified that a proposal will not be funded, the Principal Investigator should request the written comments submitted by all reviewers, read the comments, and consider them carefully. The proposal and the comments should be shared with colleagues who are willing to offer their own candid critique of the proposal. In cases where readers base their reservations on reparable flaws in the proposal, rather than on lack of intrinsic merit, rethinking, rewriting, and resubmission are in order. In rewriting, the critiques of colleagues and reviewers should be treated not as attacks to be defended against, but as resources to be used in clarifying and strengthening the proposal both as a scholarly work and as a communications tool. The cycle of writing, rejection, rewriting, and resubmission may be repeated more than once. Yet, if the criticism is taken seriously, and used positively, the probability of funding increases with each resubmission. (See Chapter 4 for information on proposal shortcomings as provided by the National Institutes of Health.)
If the sponsor has declined to fund a proposal because it does not address a problem of interest to that sponsor, contact the Sponsored Programs Information Specialist for assistance in locating more appropriate sponsors.
If you do receive notification from the Sponsor that your proposal will not be funded, please notify Sponsored Projects Services.
