ARRA Opportunities and OCG
Dear Deans, Chairs, Directors, and Investigators,
Please distribute the important message below to your faculty as soon as possible. This information is critical to those who are interested in competing for the numerous ARRA-related funding opportunities made available over the last several weeks.
I am sure that you are well aware of the significant opportunities for research funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and that a majority of the proposals solicited for new funding programs under ARRA will need to be submitted through Grants.gov. You may not be as aware, however, about the increasing inefficiency of the Grants.gov system. Problems logging into the system are common, and, once in the system, it frequently takes multiple attempts over many hours to submit just one proposal.
The situation with Grants.gov has deteriorated so much that the OMB has directed the Department of Health and Human Services to fix the problem. In the meantime, Grants.gov has suggested that sponsored project offices across the country reduce the number of proposals submitted in any given day and require investigators to submit their proposals 10 business days in advance of the deadline. This is happening just when thousands of "extra" proposals will be submitted for a single deadline on April 27th, the NIH Challenge Grant Program. Here at UCB, we expect upwards of 100 proposals to be submitted to the Challenge Grant Program, not to mention hundreds of other proposals that will be submitted to the instrumentation, facilities, supplemental, and other NIH programs.
Consequently, it is imperative that you work closely with the Office of Contracts and Grants to prepare and package your proposals and to submit your proposals to OCG for review as early as possible. Specifically,
- Principal Investigators, who are able to upload their own files into the Grants.gov package, should contact their Proposal Analyst to coordinate their efforts.
- In all cases, it is critical that completed packages be submitted to OCG 10 business days in advance of the posted Grants.gov deadline.
I understand that this will require extra planning and coordination, but it is the only way to ensure that your proposals will make it through the "perfect storm" of increased opportunities for funding and decreased functionality of Grants.gov.
As always, OCG will do its best to get your proposals submitted successfully, but you can help by assuming more responsibility for packaging your Grants.gov proposals and getting them to OCG as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Randall Draper, Ph.D.
Director, Office of Contracts and Grants
Russell Moore, Ph.D.
Interim Vice Chancellor for Research