SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: NIH Grant Submission Caution, DOE Deadline Looms
Gail
& Jim Greenwood,
Copyright © 2012 by
Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.
A
quick comment on the upcoming NIH grant deadline, and then we’ll delve into
our main topic this month, which is advice in responding to the new Dept. of
Energy solicitation/funding opportunity announcement.
NIH
Deadline Caution
As
many of you know, NIH’s summer time grant deadline falls on August 5th
each year. However, this year is different: because the 5th is a
Sunday,so the deadline is pushed back to 5 pm on August 6th.
However,
don’t conclude that this means that you can wait until the 6th to
submit your NIH proposal. Remember that NIH grant submissions must be made via
the grants.gov electronic application system. Unfortunately, grants.gov
continues to suffer from a significant number of idiosyncrasies that may impact
your ability to successfully submit your proposal. On virtually every deadline
involving a grants.gov submission, we get a panic call from someone who is
trying to submit their proposal and, for reasons unknown, it won’t work. The
panic call to us generally comes after the proposer has made a panic call to the
grants.gov help desk, which is backlogged with panic calls from other panicked
submitters. Therefore, PLEASE do not wait until the last day to submit your NIH
grant proposal—try to submit it a day or two in advance, so you can resolve
any submission “issues” before the last minute.
DOE
Phase 1 Solicitation
The
Department of Energy has released the topics for its first FY2013 Phase 1 SBIR/STTR
solicitation (aka funding opportunity announcement or FOA). The full
solicitation comes out on August 13th. You have a critically
important homework assignment between now and the 13th: you need to
review the DOE topics/subtopics, find any that interest you, form the questions
you inevitably will have about the “real meaning” or specifics of the
topics, and strike up a dialog with the DOE staffer responsible for each topic
to get those questions answered. Why do that now? Because once the full
solicitation comes out on August 13th, you can no longer talk to the
topic authors/representatives. Your only option at that time will be to ask your
questions on line, which means both your questions and DOE’s answers will be
posted for everyone to see. The problem with that your brilliant and insightful
questions, and DOE’s helpful answers, are shared with every other firm that
wants to submit a proposal on “your” topic.
To
help identify the person(s) at DOE with whom you want to have the pre-August 13th
dialog, you might want to participate in a series of webinars held by DOE on
July 30 through August 1. Each webinar will feature DOE managers responsible for
the FY2013 Phase 1 topics. These managers have only a few minutes to talk about
their topics, and you probably don’t want to ask your great questions during
the webinar, so consider following up with these managers prior to August 13th.
If you miss the original webinars, they will be recorded and accessible on the
DOE SBIR website.
A
couple of other important points about the current DOE SBIR/STTR Phase 1
solicitation:
First,
DOE is requiring a letter of intent from anyone planning to submit a proposal
for the current solicitation. Unless you submit that letter by its September 4th
deadline, you cannot submit a proposal. DOE used to require a letter of intent,
then changed last year to a “pre-application” requirement, and now is once
again requiring the letter of intent. This is an excellent example of why you
have to read each new solicitation thoroughly, as the agencies make changes (and
changes to their changes) constantly.
Second,
you may be frustrated that DOE has no renewable or alternative energy topics in
the current solicitation. DOE has decided to dedicate one solicitation per year
to such topics, and its other solicitation to “other” topics of interest to
the agency. This happens to be the “other” solicitation. If you want to
apply for one of the renewable or alternative energy topics, you will have to
wait for the next DOE solicitation, the topics for which will be released around
October 29, 2012.
One
final word of advice on the DOE SBIR/STTR Phase 1 solicitation: Although DOE
makes its SBIR/STTR awards as grants, it acts more like a contracts
agency--meaning that it has fairly narrow topics on which it wants to receive
proposals. If your innovation falls outside of those topics, then don’t try to
force the fit—either seek out another agency that might entertain your
interests, or try to convince DOE that it should include a future topic in its
solicitation that aligns with your interests.