SBIR Proposal Writing Basics

SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Three Important Changes in the Current DOD Solicitation

Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

Many of you are preparing Phase 1 SBIR proposals to the Department of Defense in response to DOD’s current solicitation. After all, DOD is the largest SBIR awarding agency, and has very broad interests that stretch across many areas including life sciences, materials, energy, and environmental impact. We have identified three significant changes in the DOD’s SBIR program that are reflected in the current solicitation. We believe you must grasp and appropriately respond to these changes, or the chances of your Phase 1 proposal to DOD being funded are diminished.

Heavier commercialization emphasis

We were struck, the first time we read the latest DOD solicitation, how many times “commercialization” was explicitly mentioned, or implicit in the discussion. For example, all of the first seven paragraphs in the DOD solicitation include the term “commercialization” or refer to it. As many of you know, commercialization is an important objective of the SBIR program, and receives ever-increasing emphasis by the agencies—this is certainly true of DOD. Therefore, it is important that you emphasize the Phase 3 applications of your innovation throughout your Phase 1 proposal.

Do not confuse “commercialization” with “selling to private customers for non-DOD applications” however. In the context of the DOD SBIR program and this solicitation, you almost always want to equate “commercialization” with “productizing the results of your SBIR project and getting it into the hands of the warfighter or supporter thereof to solve the pressing problem or need stated in the topic description.” As a rule of thumb, DOD do not give SBIR awards to small firms that fail to understanding that the military is the primary customer when it comes to Phase 3. If you can find an additional, non-DOD, non-military application of your SBIR project then that is fine, but it must take a distant back-seat to meeting the DOD’s needs. Therefore, in your Phase 1 proposal, we recommend you devote about 2 pages to commercialization, of which 1.5 pages focuses on how you will get the results of your project into DOD’s hands in Phase 3, and 0.5 page can address those non-DOD applications of your innovation.

Change in Page Count

Historically, DOD components required that your Phase 1 SBIR proposal not exceed 25 pages. That page count was inclusive of all parts of the proposal, from the cover sheet to the cost proposal (although not the mandatory company commercialization report). Some of you know that several DOD components, namely Army, Air Force and Missile Defense Agency (MDA) recently have gone to a 20 page limit on their Phase 1 proposals. However, this 20 page limit does not include the cost proposal, which is 2 pages if you use the recommended, on- line budget form, so this 20 page limit at these three DOD components actually is a 22 page limit.

So here’s where it gets confusing (?): the other DOD components continue to have 25 page limits on their Phase 1 proposals, but now they do not count the cost proposal within that limit. Therefore, what looks like the old 25 page limit is actually a new 27 page limit. If that does not seem like a big deal, just wait until you are frantically trying to squeeze your non-Army, non-Air Force, non-MDA Phase 1 proposal into the DOD 25 page limit—when you realize you now have 2 more pages than you used to have, you will be glad you know about this little change in DOD rules.

Declaring Foreign Nationals

First, let’s define “foreign national.” The DOD instructions do this by telling what is NOT a foreign national: a US citizen, a lawfully admitted permanent resident, or a “protected individual” which is something like a refugee or someone who has been granted asylum in the US. See Section 2.15 of the DOD’s FY10.2 Phase 1 SBIR solicitation for further definition and references. Per Section 3.5(b)(7), DOD now requires that you identify any foreign national on your proposed Phase 1 effort, regardless of whether they are an employee of your firm, or part of a subcontractor or consultant that you are including on the proposal. DOD has been asking you to identify foreign nationals in recent solicitations, but they now explicitly include consultants and subcontractors, so you will need to work closely with anyone or any firm or entity (like a university or Federal lab) that you are including on your proposal to identify any foreign nationals. In addition to naming these individuals, you need to indicate their country of origin (citizenship?), type of work permit or visa underwhich they are allowed to be in the US, and what role they will have on the proposed project.

We don’t know where you stand on issues like the controversial illegal alien law in Arizona, but this is not the place to decide that you will fail to identify and disclose information about a foreign national (from any country) if you disagree with DOD’s “request.” That is because Section 3.8 of the new DOD solicitation describes the ramifications of not being completely truthful in your proposal or other correspondence with the DOD—basically, you are committing a felony that is punishable by, among other things, imprisonment. Therefore, if you cannot live with the DOD requirement of foreign national identification and disclosure, we suggest you pass up this solicitation and look for another source of funding for your innovative project.

But, assuming you are willing to abide by the DOD’s foreign national requirement, then we believe it is important that you proactively determine how to minimize any concerns that they might jeopardize the project and/or national security. You might indicate, for example, that their role will not put them in contact with sensitive information or technology. Or you might indicate that the person has been in the United States for a significant period of time, and/or has been involved in other projects for the DOD or other national security agency. Be open and honest, but also help the reviewer see that any foreign national working on your SBIR project is not a threat.

So those are three changes that we hope you will remember as you prepare your Phase 1 SBIR proposal to DOD. Further, we recommend that you always carefully read the solicitation, particularly the component-specific proposal instructions that appear at the beginning of each component’s topic list. The general instructions at the beginning of the DOD solicitation are also very important, but each component has supplemental instructions that you must comply with, or risk having your proposal tossed out as being “unresponsive.” Good luck!