SBIR Proposal Writing Basics: Electronic Proposal Submission Spreads Across Most Agencies
Gail
& Jim Greenwood,
Copyright © 2006
by
Several
SBIR/STTR agencies, including Dept of Defense (DOD), National Science Foundation
(NSF) and NASA, have been requiring proposals to be submitted electronically for
some time now. That trend is now
spreading to most of the remaining agencies, including the Department of
Agriculture (USDA), Department of Energy (DOE) and National Institutes of Health
(NIH). We don’t want to discuss
the philosophy of a paperless society or anything like that—what we want to do
is make sure you realize this adds an important and potentially time consuming
effort to the process of preparing and submitting an SBIR or STTR proposal.
The
granting agencies are rallying behind the www.grants.gov
electronic submission process. NIH,
DOE and USDA are already requiring you to use grants.gov, and NSF will switch
from their current “Fast Lane” process to grants.gov beginning with its Fall
’06 submissions. The good news is
that once you master grants.gov, that skill will be transferable to the other
granting agencies. The bad news is
that grants.gov is relatively cumbersome and technical, requiring a learning
curve for many SBIR/STTR submitters.
The
contracting agencies appear to intend to continue to do their own thing when it
comes to electronic submission. DOD
has a process that can be used across all DOD components, but NASA has a
different process. It is not clear
yet what some of the smaller agencies like Environmental Protection Agency or
Dept of Transportation will use, but the is no single electronic submission
process that all of the contracting agencies are expected to use.
We
would like to offer several pieces of advice if you are planning to submit an
SBIR/STTR proposal to one of the agencies using the electronic submission
process:
First,
allow ample time to learn the system. The
degree of difficulty and effort required to master each electronic submission
process will differ, but the common denominator is that all time to do so.
Do not plan to finalize the proposal the day before it’s due and then
figure out how to upload it; instead,
start working NOW on learning the system that your agency is using.
Take advantage of the tutorials and demos that are available, ask
questions of the helps desks associated with each electronic submission system,
and ask for help from other firms who have a track record of successfully using
the system you are about to use.
Second,
be prepared to register multiple places. Depending
on the electronic submission system that your agency is using, you may be
required to register your company, your subcontractors, your PI, and maybe your
dog at one or more third party sites in addition to registering at the
electronic submission system itself. Once
again, you need to start learning the electronic submission system as far in
advance of submitting your proposal as possible, and be especially watchful for
these additional registration requirements.
Some may take some time to register you and produce the id or account
number you need.
Third,
be prepared to buy some conversion software.
Many of the electronic submission systems require (or at least highly
recommend) that the body of your proposal be converted to PDF format.
Therefore, you will need to have access to it.
You can buy the software, sign up on the Adobe website for a
“subscription,” have a friend with PDF capability do the conversion for you,
or sign up for the offer on the Adobe website to do five PDF conversions
for free. Once again, if the
proposal is due at
Fourth,
seek out access to a high speed Internet connection.
Yes, we know many of you already have this.
But we also know of folks who don’t have it, perhaps in part because
they live in a remote area where such service is harder to find or use.
Some of the files you will be downloading, creating, and sending can be
HUGE, so try to have a plan for high speed Internet access.
Fifth,
print the proposal out before you send it in.
Yeah, all this paperless stuff is great, but sometimes you just gotta
print something to see what the heck it will look like when some administrator
or reviewer for the agency prints it out. Just
because it’s going in electronically doesn’t mean it shouldn’t look pretty
when it gets printed (and doesn’t violate page limits, minimum margin widths,
etc). As a related suggestion, email
the file(s) to someone else before you submit it to the agency to make sure
everything looks the same after it’s been transmitted.
Our experience is that conversions are pretty good about 95% of the
time—the other 5% can lead to confusion, embarrassment, and other things that
you don’t want to have associated with your proposal.
Sixth,
make sure you know the submission process. How/when
do you actually “send” the proposal to the agency?
Can you submit pieces of the proposal or can you only upload it when it
is finished? Can you submit revised
versions and, if so, what is the deadline for doing so and what happens to the
“old version?” Is there a way to
remove the proposal entirely if you decide at the last minute that submission of
your proposal would be “ill-advised?”
Seventh,
remain calm. This is going to
lengthen the time it takes to prepare and submit your proposal.
You are not going to understand everything the first time.
You may make mistakes, get error messages, and maybe worse.
But you are not the first person to become subjected to the electronic
SBIR/STTR proposal submission requirement, and you, too, will survive.
A lot of problems can be overcome if you will simply start the process of
learning your agency’s electronic proposal submission process far in advance
of the proposal due date, since that will take the pressure off of you—you can
afford some screw ups, confusion, and blind alleys if you give yourself time to
overcome them.