Thursday, October 30, 2008

#66: More Grants.Gov Resources for Grant Writers


I've had this grants.gov update in my draft folder for awhile now. Sorry I haven't published it sooner. This technical grants.gov stuff is pretty boring, but there's nothing worse than trying to find information about grants.gov in a hurry, so I push myself to read whatever they send.

By the way, if you haven't used the new Grants.gov Adobe system Federal agencies are now using, allow plenty of time ( an extra day or two) for the upload. Everything went fine as I prepared to upload the last Federal grant I did until I clicked on submit. The system went off into La-la land.

The Help Desk had to walk me through some convoluted tricks to get my application loaded. I wouldn't want to 1) try to reach them and 2) follow the directions while the clock was ticking away.

So, here are some new (well, they were new when I put them into my draft folder mid-September) Grants.gov resources.

New Troubleshooting Tips Webpage Added to Grants.gov
Grants.gov has added a troubleshooting tips page as an additional resource for applicants. The new resource concentrates on common troubleshooting issues such as verifying your Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) status, login for E-Business Point of Contact (E-Biz POC) and accessing search results. These troubleshooting tips can help you quickly resolve your technical issues. To visit the troubleshooting tips page

Subscribe to the Grants.gov Blog
Check here daily for system status, opportunity updates and new blog entries.Grants.gov Blog.
And there's a newsletter, too
The “Succeed” E-Newsletter is a guide to the latest updates, handy tips and useful articles on how to best use Grants.gov. Subscribe to the 'Succeed' E-Newsletter

I like to submit my Federal grants at night when everything is quieter. If you're inclined to do that, too, be aware that the Help Desk closes at 9 pm. When I needed help it was 8:20 pm. The person who helped me was great -- knowledgeable and pleasant. We worked steadily through the secret process (you'll never find it documented anywhere) and finished right at 9 pm.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

good advice Ruth - I too have struggled with the on-line submission process - this part of the process is the one I consider the most stressful - if it is not on time - I do not care who you are - it is not in the competition - I always have a deadline to submit that gives me time for the old reliable federal express method

Anonymous said...

Aside from the free downloadable Adobe forms from Grants.gov, there are also commercial solutions for preparing and submitting to Grants.gov. Cayuse, Inc. makes one of these "system-to-system" (S2S) solutions, and several large university systems also have in-house S2S systems.