The Research Institute provides pre-award proposal and budget development support for faculty and professional staff seeking external funding. Each college and campus unit has been assigned a Project Development Officer (PDO) to serve a their single point of contact for proposal development and submission. Your PDO can provide you with budget development assistance by gathering current salaries and wages, fringe benefits, indirect costs, and other cost rates. Your PDO will guide you through the required Proposal Review and Proposal Authorization steps and help you successfully submit your proposal on time.
Whether you are a first time funding seeker or an experieced principal investigator, we encourage you to contact your Project Development Officer well in advance of your proposal submission deadline. If a PDO has not been assigned to you, or if your project involves multiple campus units, please contact us for assistance.
In developing your proposal it is important to strictly adhere to all sponsor guidelines and proposal submission requirements. Failure to meet submission deadlines, include required information, use specified fonts and pagination, or include a specified number of copies will often cause your proposal to be returned without review. Please work with your Project Development Officer to analyze the requirements of the specific funding opportunity you are pursuing.
The following is a collection of general proposal development tips:
- Adhere to sponsor deadlines and submission protocols. Make sure you know if the proposal submission date is a postmark date or receipt date. Also determine whether your proposal must be submitted electronically, by mail, or both.
- Submit the required number of copies. Some sponsors require multiple copies of your proposal and may require electronic copies to be submitted on a disk as well.
- Prepare budgets in accordance with sponsor budget instructions. Some sponsors specify the maximum amount that may be requested, require specific cost sharing commitments, or prohibit certain types of costs. Please work with your Project Development Officer to determine the appropriate costs to include in your proposal budget.
- Justify proposal budget items adequately. Sponsors want to know how you plan to spend the requested funds and how the proposed expenditures will benefit the project objectives.
Proposal Development Tools