The Grants.gov system used to submit proposals to the federal funding agencies is experiencing problems that threaten the timely submission of UC Berkeley grant applications. These problems also are affecting the submission of proposals from other universities across the country and appear to relate to the Grant.gov server’s inability to effectively process the large number of proposal submissions being submitted at the same time. Issues related to the conversion to Adobe Acrobat proposal preparation software also are creating difficulties. In some cases proposals are not making it to the target agency in time to be accepted and reviewed.
In response, the Sponsored Projects Office has decided to allow our research administrators to submit proposals after office hours to enhance the chances of a proposal making it through the Grants.gov pipeline without incident. The UC Berkeley community can assist SPO with this challenge by taking steps to submit proposals in final form by the required internal proposal deadline. Late proposals run the risk of being caught in a Grants.gov bottleneck that the funding agency may or may not recognize and accommodate.
