- Outline your long‐term goals for research, education or service.
- Review your literature to make sure you can provide evidence from the literature documenting the importance of your work.
- Identify a problem that must be solved to reach your long‐term goals and develop a proposal.
- Locate funding opportunities in which the funder’s goals are the closest match with your goals.
- Read the full announcement carefully, paying special attention to the eligibility requirements for the institution and investigator, any limits on the amount of money that can be requested, the length of the award period, due dates, any requirements for supplementary documents, review criteria and any restrictions on formatting.
- Some federal agencies (DOE, DOJ, NASA, NIH and NSF) require principal investigators (PIs) to register as individuals before PIs can use the agencies’ respective electronic submission sites. Contact your assigned pre-award research administrator for assistance with your individual registration.
- Develop a timeline for completing your proposal. If you need letters of support, send your requests to the appropriate people at least one month ahead of time. Your timeline must include time for your chair and research dean to authorize your proposal and a minimum of five days for the OSRP to review and submit it. Use your outline to develop your narrative.
- Contact OSRP for assistance in developing your proposal and budget. We will help you throughout the process of preparing your proposal. Begin working on your budget at soon as possible. This is critical if there is a maximum amount of funds that will be awarded; you do not want to complete your narrative and find out there will not be enough money to do what you have planned. Email your budget for review by OSRP.
- Enter the preliminary data for your proposal into RAMSeS. The internal routing/approval does not start until you submit the data.
Note: Allow at least two months (60 days) to prepare your proposal. Utilize a proposal checklist to help organize your proposal.