Gail & Jim Greenwood, Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

Copyright © 2001 by Greenwood Consulting Group, Inc.

It seems like someone is always looking for samples of winning SBIR or STTR proposals. They can be found in various places, including on some of the agencies’ websites, in the back of some SBIR solicitations, and through organizations like Project SBIR West. You also can sometimes entice a successful SBIR/STTR company to share one of their winning proposals, provided you are not perceived to be a competitor. Agencies, by the way, cannot readily share proposals that they have received because they must protect the proprietary rights of the submitters.

We encourage you to look at sample SBIR/STTR proposals—heck, we even include a couple in our workshops! However, we want to caution you about HOW you use them.

First, there is no such thing as a perfect SBIR or STTR proposal. While we certainly don’t want to minimize the hard work and skill that most proposers have put into a winning proposal, our experience suggests that most funded proposals are not flawless. Therefore, don’t treat a winning SBIR/STTR proposal as gospel or the Holy Grail—it’s just a sample of what one company did to respond to a particular agency about a particular topic, and they did a good enough job to win.

Second, try to determine the approximate date of the sample proposal. If a cover page is included, there may be some reference to fiscal year (or sometimes a number assigned by the agency will start, for example, with "93-xxx" signifying it came from fiscal year 1993). The dates in the bios might also give some indication, as will the most recent dates in the bibliography. Why do you care? The SBIR and STTR programs have gotten more competitive over time, so what might have been good enough to win a few years ago might not be good enough today. Also, certain things receive greater emphasis now, compared to the good ‘ol days—for example, today’s commercialization discussion has to be a lot better in your proposal than it would have been before the 1992 SBIR reauthorization when commercial applications began receiving greater emphasis by the agencies. Therefore, if you emulate an older proposal, you may not write at a level, and with the appropriate emphasis, to be a winner in today’s environment.

Third, we have seen a number of proposals that were awarded because the writer (whether intentionally or not) said the right things to the right reviewer and they won—even though the proposal itself was only average in quality. That kind of sample proposal will not be very helpful as you write to a different reviewer about a different topic. Other proposals were prepared, for example, by a company with 25 employees that has won 40 SBIR/STTR projects over the past decade and commercialized all of them. If your company has two employees (you plus your dog) and has never won an SBIR and has no commercialization track record, that sample proposal is not going to look anything (hopefully) like what yours will.

Fourth, each agency has a little different twist on what they want you to present, and how. Therefore, if you look at a sample proposal written to a different agency than the one you are pursuing, you need to take note of such differences. For example, NIH does not require a separate section on commercialization, while NASA does (and expects a pretty detailed discussion of it, we might add). Therefore, a sample of an NIH proposal will not give you proper guidance on how your NASA proposal should look with regard to this important topic. As a rule of thumb, a proposal submitted to an SBIR grant agency is not guide guidance for a proposal being submitted to an SBIR contract agency, and vice versa (NIH, DOE, NSF, USDA award grants, while DOD, NASA, NIH, DOT, DOC, DoED, and EPA award contracts).

In summary, we urge you to look at sample SBIR and STTR proposals. But do so with a very critical eye, and with the goal of finding things in those proposals that you would like to incorporate in your future proposals (as well as the things that you don’t like in them and want to avoid). Do not expect to find the perfect proposal that will exactly fit what you want to say, and how you need to say it.