Silent Fraud in Federal Grant Evaluations Costs Billions

I'm stuck in a very difficult position with one of my evaluation clients right now. I have a report due very soon and there are some poor outcomes to report and some whistle blowing that needs to be done. This is the very reason why this particular program requires that all grantees hire independent external evaluators.  Many federal programs have the same requirement.  It's an effort to ensure that grantees don't fudge their evaluation results to make themselves look better and worthy of continued funding.

The problem is that most external evaluators are not independent.  In fact, they are very dependent on the grantees for their livelihood.  Sure, they aren't employees of the grantees; they are usually independent contractors, but bias is inherently built into the relationship by the very people who want to ensure an unbiased evaluation - the funders.

The problem: Grantees have the freedom to fire evaluators who say things that they don't want to hear and hire someone else who will be more amenable to telling the story the way the grantee wants it told. And in this time of economic hardship and massive budget cuts impacting almost every organization in the country, grantees have a powerful incentive to look good at all costs just to keep the dollars flowing.

Sure, you can say that an evaluator with integrity will tell the truth anyway, and I agree with you to some extent.  Unfortunately, in today's economy jobs are hard to come by and independent contractors have to do everything they can to get and keep jobs, so many are faced with this ethical conundrum at a time when they will pay a very high price for their integrity. They are faced with biting the hand that feeds them, and hoping that the hand doesn't bite back.

And for every honest evaluator who stands her ground, there are 20 unscrupulous ones ready and willing to step in and say whatever the client wants to hear.

And it's not just about the integrity of the evaluator in that situation or keeping that job. The grant world is a fairly small one and word spreads.  No one wants the reputation of being someone who isn't afraid to make their client look bad.  It makes you a hero among evaluators and funders, but it also makes you untouchable to clients, and they are the folks who make the hiring decisions.

Here's another problem:  Many external evaluators write the federal performance reports for their clients.  In many ways this makes sense because they are the ones most familiar with the data and in the best position to describe and report the outcomes. However, performance reports technically are the responsibility of the grantee and they are submitted by the grantee as their statement of progress. In a performance report, the grantee has every right to change what the evaluator writes to align it with their own perspective. So, even if the evaluator has the integrity to tell the ugly truth, the funder won't see it, unless of course the grantee doesn't read their own report before it is submitted which is an unfortunate, but very common, practice..

Unlike performance reports, evaluation reports cannot be tampered with by the grantee, but the evaluator has to deal with the first problem I described - biting the hand that feeds them.

So here I sit, staring at some data that tell a very unflattering story. I'll write the performance report that tells the truth and the client will get very upset and change it before they submit it. Then we'll have some tension in our professional relationship, which I'll spend the next 5 months trying to repair before the decision about contracting with me next year has to be made.

Yes, my friends, these are your tax dollars at work. It's a corrupt system. Because performance reports are used by the federal government to make decisions about continuation funding, lying in performance reports constitutes fraud, but everyone looks away.  Looking away is the only way the corrupt system can continue.

In a time when banks and big businesses are being vilified for their fiscal practices, this fraud - which amounts to billions of dollars a year - goes unexamined and continues to thrive in every corner of the country.

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New Federal Grant Opportunities

The federal government, under the auspices of The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance, has announced three new grant opportunities. These new grants are announced in the form of a "Funding Opportunity Announcement" for the Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood Grants program.

The programs are well-funded with $52,000,000 available for a Fatherhood program, $57,000,000 for a Marriage program, and $6,000,000 for an ex-prisoner Father's program.

Links to each of the programs are provided below:
Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood Grants Program
Community-Centered Healthy Marriage and Relationship (CCHMR) Grants Program
Community-Centered Responsible Fatherhood Ex-Prisoner Reentry Pilot Project


Call us if you need help writing a grant for one of these opportunities. (530) 669-3600.

Where is Grant Writing Perfection?

I’m agonizing over a grant narrative.  It isn’t perfect yet.  I’m missing a key piece of data from the client.  There are a couple of sections that can be tightened up. The deadline is coming and it’s not perfect yet. I always have trouble decided when to put it to rest.

There are some big truths about grant writing I’ve learned through years of practice.

1.      Writing is never finished.

2.      You and your client rarely prioritize the grant in the same way.

3.      The further removed a partner is from the writing, the harder it is to get what you need from them.

4.      You must stop revising at some point at edit carefully.

5.      When a section of narrative is hard to tighten up (make crystal-clear and comprehensible) a graphic might help accomplish that.

Perfection in your written narrative is something you aren’t going to achieve.  You do though want to be perfectly accurate, perfectly edited, and perfectly on time!  You’ll always agonize as you send it that there was a section you could have improved upon.  There will always be that unhelpful partner that sends you a letter of support the day after the grant was due.

We all learn to live with a little imperfection in the world and grant writing is no different.

Related Posts:
Grant Writing is No Mystery
Grant Writing is like Lasagna

In the Grant Writing Business, the Customer is Always Right...Even When He's Not

We got some really good news this weekend.  I learned that one of the federal grants I wrote last spring was funded. This was not the only good news we have received or will receive from the latest grant writing season, but it was particularly satisfying because of how much this client really needs the program we wrote.

Because the client is in such need to get the program going, the program administrator hit the ground running today to get the budget in the system and get the program up and running as soon as possible.  His plan hit the skids, though, as soon as it hit the desk of the head of the fiscal department who informed him that the amounts we had budgeted for personnel and benefits were too low.  So, he set up a conference call between me, the fiscal person, and himself to try to work it out.  I gave the best advice I had for revising the budget quickly so they could get going.

Then my client (the program administrator) said something interesting.  He said,"I don't know how this happened because I know we gave you the correct numbers when we were in the grant development process." That's one of those moments when what you want to say and what you know you have to say are different. What I wanted to say was, "Are you kidding? I can prove that we used the numbers you sent.  I have the old emails...."  But no, that's not what came out of my mouth.  I knew this was a "fall on your sword for your client" moment.  I really hate those moments, but I said it anyway, "I'm really sorry.  I can't explain how we made such an error, but I can certainly help you move forward from here and I'll do my best not to put you in this position again."

Like in every other business, in grant writing, the customer is right, whether or not he really is.  Preserving the relationship is the important part, not being right.

This has been a particularly hard lesson to learn for me because I really, really like to be right.  Don't get me wrong - I have no problem standing up to my clients when they need some corrective direction in the planning or evaluation processes, but those of in business for ourselves need to be able to discern when it's appropriate to correct the client, and when it's appropriate to help them look better with their own organization so the relationship can continue smoothly.


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Federal Government Grant Priorities.....Whose Priorities?

I was scanning the grant opportunities at grants.gov this morning, and I noticed something that I have noticed for years, but today it struck me a bit differently. I'm accustomed to seeing hundreds of grant opportunities that don't apply to my clients.  Many are amusing (I've posted on Facebook about competitions for funds to save particular obscure animal species, etc.) and some are just incomprehensible. However, at a time when our economy is in trouble and people are suffering, some of the federal grant priorities seem just wrong.

Non-profit organizations that are often the last line of support for our most needy citizens are struggling for every dime these days, yet here are just a few of the hundreds of things that the government is choosing to fund instead:

Inventory of Cave Dwelling Animals in Wet Caves Grant - I think we could just go with last year's inventory numbers, don't you?

Azerbaijan New Media Project - This is $4,000,000 to support the development of new media and online communities in Azerbaijan. Supposedly it will help with the distribution of US aide there.

Establishing a Global System of Regional Wildlife Networks: Providing Support for Central American Wildlife - Wildlife here are so well protected that we have extra cash to be protecting wildlife in Central America?

Mexican Spotted Owl Grant - This announcement lists only "Mexican Spotted Owl" in the full description of the project.  Are we buying a Mexican spotted owl?  Several? Are we protecting it? Feeding it? Whatever we are doing to it, is it more important than $280,000 worth of food for the homeless?

Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya - $14,000,000 for this one, folks. I guess all of the youth in the US are empowered and well-educated, so it's time to move on the youth of Kenya.

Decentralization Enabling Environment - I find this one to be particularly ironic. This grant provides $2,000,000 to a nongovernmental agency in Honduras to help develop the "environment necessary for decentralization of government services to the local level in order to better respond to citizen needs." At a time when local organizations in the U.S. that do this very thing are suffering and the U.S. is going through a dramatic centralization of services and resources, we're giving money to another country to do the opposite.

MERIDA Small Grant Program for Community Youth at Risk - This one is for community-based programs for at-risk youth in Panama. See my comment above about the Youth Empowerment Program in Kenya.

Please don't misunderstand.  I am sure that there is some value in each of these programs. What kind of human being would I be if I didn't think doing something to or with Mexican Spotted Owls was important or that we shouldn't have an accurate inventory of wet cave dwelling animals?

Even so, I think we need to do a much better job of prioritizing.  Every family knows that you can't have everything. Some things that you think are important have to be put aside or postponed until you can afford them in favor of funding things that are much more important.

As for the grants I just cited (and the hundreds of others like them), just whose priorities are those, anyway?

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So THIS is Going Paperless? Really?

I just had a giggle-fit reading the small print in a federal grant Request for Proposals (RFP) when I got to the part about the Paperwork Reduction Act and the government's estimate of how many hours it should take to complete this grant application.  Clearly, whoever wrote this little ditty of a paragraph that has been pasted into thousands of federal RFPs over the years has never written a federal grant.

This one says that it should only take 40 hours to put this application together. I spend more than 40 hours just chasing down the information and doing the research I need to do to start writing.  I wonder if the developers of the recent Investing in Innovation (i3) grants considered the hours it would take to thoroughly read through the over 450 pages of RFP, FAQs and other guidance in their time estimate. I wonder how many trees gave their lives for that innovative program?

Then I look around my office at the piles of paper, and as I wonder how a person could actually figure out how many trees died in this "paper saving endeavor," I think "Paperwork Reduction Act?"  Seriously?

Don't get me wrong.  I'm all for preserving the environment and conserving paper, but I really think we use more paper since the world has started going paperless.

Think about it.  The information age and the ease of sending information over the internet means that more and more resources are available.  And even though most of those come in electronic form, what do most of us do with all of the PDFs?  Print them.

Why? So we can take them with us to read later.

Isn't that what all these mobile devices (iPhone, Netbook, Laptop, iPad, Kindle) are for? Yes, but the screen is too small or it's too hard to browse through the document electronically, or looking at a screen all day and all night hurts my eyes...or...or....or....

Sure, we get fewer bank statements in the mail, but I actually get more junk mail.  In fact, I get five times as more junk mail because now I get more paper junk mail that comes in the mail as well as all the email spam. The email spam isn't paper, but it's just as annoying.

There are more paper inserts in newspapers, too, even though fewer people are subscribing to them.  Maybe local advertisers can afford more inserts since overall circulation is down.

I am amused when I read that the inserts are made out of recycled paper because I know I'm just going to put them directly into the recycle bin without looking through them so they can get recycled and an advertiser can make more inserts that I won't read, and so on, and so on, and so on..  It seems to me that we could save a bunch of effort by just not printing them at all.  Why don't we make those advertisements paperless?

If the government is really so concerned about going paperless, why won't the IRS do it?  The IRS is actually generating more paperwork than before, and everything I get from the IRS comes with pages of useless gobbledygook.  We are supposed to file electronically so they have less paper to deal with, but why won't they return the favor?

At this moment, I really want to go back to the pre-paperless era.  I would have less paperwork to deal with than I do now.

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Grant Writing Rejection

Grant writing rejection can be hard to take. Nonprofit consultant and grant writing expert, Derek Link, provides some tips on what you should do if your grant is rejected.

One reason that grant writers can fail is by taking on too many low percentage grants that are unlikely to be funded. Selecting grants to write is a delicate thing because as a grant writer you get so many requests from unqualified applicants.


It would be easy to take on lots of contracts from clients you know don’t have a prayer of getting funded, but then your reputation is nothing but a house of cards. Unless you want to move from state to state on an annual basis where nobody knows how unsuccessful you were the year prior, success is important!

Your reputation as a grant writer relies primarily on one thing - getting grants funded. Be prepared for rejection from time to time, because not every grant can be funded; not even the best written ones. Grant rejection is hard to take when you’ve written what you believe to be a good narrative. Getting rejected means doing some damage control with the client as well as preparing for resubmission when the opportunity arises.
Here are some ideas about what to do when your grant is rejected:

1. Always ask for the readers' comments. Funding agencies don’t always have the staff to provide these so often your request will be denied. If you do get them, study them carefully and try not to focus on the things that the readers obviously missed. I’ve heard grant writers get all wound up about some reader missing something that cost them points. OK, it happens and it stinks, but move on to why did they miss it? Was it in the wrong section? Maybe it needed to be repeated, bolded, underlined. On the rewrite, make sure that point is easier to find and repeated so even the slowest reader can find it.
2. If you find that the readers really missed the mark on your proposal, then file a challenge and detail the reasons you think that the readers got it wrong. There has to be a truly egregious error for a negative funding decision to be reversed. Remember, they’ve probably already sent out the notices to all the people who were successful so it’s unlikely they are going to eat crow and reorganize the whole field to fund your proposal. But it can happen, so sometimes it’s worth a challenge. If it's a federal grant, your appeal needs to demonstrate that a standard other than the approved scoring criteria was applied.  That is nearly impossible to demonstrate.
3. If you can’t get readers’ comments then it’s a good idea to request copies of some of the winning proposals so you can compare them to what you submitted. Write down the reasons you think that the proposal was rejected and keep it on file for the following submission. It’s better to do it right after you learn why you weren’t funded.
4. If you planned with a collaborative that meets regularly, discuss the rejected proposal with them to talk about why it wasn’t funded and whether the group is capable and willing to make changes in the proposal design so it is more likely to be funded the next time around.

It’s a terrible experience to have to give a client disappointing news about a grant being rejected. Your clients put a lot of faith in your writing abilities and failure hurts your reputation as a “grant magician.” A failed grant in the early stages of a client relationship can ruin your relationship with them. Be wise about which grants you write and try to steer clear of lower percentage competitions with a client until you’ve had some success and demonstrated your competence. Once your relationship has been established, and your abilities are enshrined in the annals of their annual report, then you can survive a few rejections here and there.

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More Evidence for the Importance of Reading Everything in the RFP

You know that I am always saying you should read the instructions for any grant very carefully and follow those instructions. I also advocate this careful reading even if you have applied for the same grant in the past because things can change. One of our video Tips from the Grant Goddess discussed taking your research beyond the RFP and reading all ancillary materials referenced in the RFP.

Well, this week, I discovered two more examples of the importance of this. The first example is a case of writing a proposal that we have applied for in the past.  Last year, we wrote several of a particular variety of federal grant, so we thought we were very familiar with the requirements and the RFP.  Not so fast.

The name of the program is the same, and the basic priorities are the same, but the scoring criteria and much of the detail about the requirements has changed.  The narrative is even 10 pages shorter than last year! The week before a grant is due is a lousy time to figure this out.  How can this be avoided?   By reading the RFP thoroughly before you even start working on it.

The second example falls in the category of additional, but critical, information that is not in the RFP.  Of course, everything is supposed to be included in the Federal Register announcement, but we all know that it isn't always included.  In this case, there is a required letter of partnership that is not mentioned in the Federal Register or the RFP.  It is mentioned, however, in the non-regulatory FAQs.

The message? Read everything!  Read it thoroughly.  Read it early in the planning process.  Don't get caught off guard as the deadline approaches.

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Working with a Grant Writer - You Get What You Pay For

It has happened three times so far this season. We start working with a client on a project.  Before a contract is signed, they notify us that they have decided to go with another writer who will do the work for a lower fee.  Each time, I remain gracious, reminding the client of our success rate and our relationship, and I invite them to call if they need assistance.  Then I let go, and move on to others.

Last month, we got calls from the first two (with just a week before the deadline) telling us that their "bargain grant writer" bailed out on them at the last minute, and asking if we would take on the project. For one of them, we did, and we successfully met the deadline with a quality proposal. We were unable to help the other one because we just had too many proposals on our plate at that time.

Today, we heard from bargain shopper number three. This time, the client has been working with the new consultants, but after receiving two drafts, it became clear that the product was not going to be good.  So, with a grant deadline just 6 days away (counting the weekend), the client called and asked if we would take on the project. This is a long time client and normally we do everything we can to help, but this time, the answer is "no." Why? We have quite a few projects in the hopper right now, including another one due on the same date as the one the client wants us to take on.  Decisions have to made, and I choose to reward the loyalty of those who didn't allow themselves to be lured away by big promises and lower fees by focusing on their projects when time is tight.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with trying to get the best possible deal for your organization. In fact, I think it's your duty as a public servant to do so.  However, the "best deal" is not always just about money.  In the case of grant writing, you also need to consider success rate, experience with the particular grant for which you are applying, and experience in field you work. If your proposal is about health care services and you hire someone who has never written a health care grant (or maybe has written just a couple) and has no experience in the health care field, you will get what you pay for - the grant writer's on the job training.

In these tough budget times, everyone is looking for ways to cut corners.  Just remember that if you don't get the grant, have you really saved anything?  And if you do get the grant written by the more experienced writer, wasn't the slightly higher fee worth every penny?

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Want more information about working with a grant writer? Visit our Grant Writing Resources page.

Lessons from Reviewing Grants

Non-Profit Consultant Derek Link shares the value of his experience as a grant reader:

Probably the most beneficial thing I’ve ever done as a grant writer is to volunteer to read and score grants. I highly recommend this strategy for anyone who wants to learn how to write a grant. Where else can you be educated, bored, entertained, aggravated, pampered, and condescended to all in one week?

I’ve been invited to read grants by state and federal government agencies. These agencies brought a group of us all together in one place – usually a hotel – and we’d be put up in rooms and given a stipend to cover our costs.

To read the grants we were given group training and organized into “triads”, groups of three as you may guess. One person with previous experience was elevated as the leader of the triad and usually had a larger room with a little dining area or a couch and chairs. This person organized the triad’s reading, hosted the scoring reviews, picked up and dropped off proposals and scoring forms, and generally attempted to ensure that the group accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish; namely, read and score a certain number of grants over a period of days.

Here are a few of the many reasons this experience is so instructive:

1. You are given detailed training by the agency staff on the important points of the grant program. This is useful if you ever want to submit a grant to that program;
2. The process entails carefully scoring proposals according to the agency criteria, then comparing your scores to the other members of the triad. Usually there is a predetermined tolerance for score meaning all scores must be within a specified range. When a score falls outside the range, the triad must “discuss” why a certain score was given and make adjustments to move the scores closer together. This can be horrific if a genetically recalcitrant person is part of your triad – I’ve experienced one or two very long weeks of grant reading with people who were never subsequently included on my Christmas card list;
3. You get out of town, take a plane ride, meet new people, stay in a nice hotel (usually), and meet government employees (can be fun or fascinating);
4. You’ll see some truly fabulous writing that may make you feel rather incompetent – and it doesn’t take a Steinbeck to inspire me (although he does);
5. You’ll also get to see some truly hideous writing that makes you feel better about your own – I even feel better about my serial hacking of grammar (lamented by many would-be English teachers).

In summary, there are more pros than cons to being a grant reader so by all means go and do it if you’re serious about becoming a good grant writer.  In a compressed time and through hands-on experience you’ll get a great education about good grant writing.

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Related Posts:

How to Be a Better Grant Writer (Part 1)

How to be a Better Grant Writer (Part 2)

The Value of Readers' Comments

Is There a Formula for Grant Writing Success?

If It's Not Right, Just Say No

I did a BlogTalkRadio broadcast on Saturday about two new RFPs that came out last Friday - Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools and Grants for Integrating Schools with Mental Health Systems. On the radio show, I summarized the details of each grant opportunity - deadlines, eligibility requirements, funding priorities, available funding, etc.

One of the details for Grants for Integrating Schools with Mental Health Systems is that grant funds cannot be used to fund direct services for students.

Since then, I've had two conversations with people who want to know if there is any way they could use that funding source to pay for a school counselor.  The answer was, "Not if that counselor is going to provide any direct services to students." Both then followed up with several questions asking if we could find a way to describe the counselor's duties that would be acceptable to get them funded, but then they went on to make their intent clear - that the counselor would be providing direct services to students.  My answer, "No."

When you have an intensive need, it's very tempting to try to make the square peg of what you need fit into the round hole of what the funder is offering, but it is never a good idea. Not only can it be unethical, but ultimately, it won't help you get closer to the achievement of your mission.

In the case of my example, I advised these clients to wait for the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling Program grants.  That source will fund school counselors.  It's a square hole made to fit the client's square peg.

Keep looking, you'll find the funding source that fits your needs.

If you find one that's not right for you, just say no.

Grants.gov Trouble

If you have been trying to upload a grant to grants.gov within the last several days, you have been frustrated. As many of us predicted, the grants.gov servers went down when over 27,000 agencies tried to upload applications at the same time.

Overall, grants.gov activity of all kinds has doubled in the past several months, straining the already glitchy system to a breaking point.

The grants.gov blog says that everything is fixed now, but please be aware that the warnings to start early with your uploads (not waiting until the last day) are more important than ever.

Also, you should know that several federal agencies have reverted to their old electronic grants submittal formats, stepping away from grants.gov for now, until they can be sure the glitches are all worked out.

What does this mean for YOU? You may need to register all over again on a new system that you haven't used recently. Here are our tips for success in this interesting period of many opportunities and much competition:

• Read the directions very carefully on any grant you are considering. Pay attention to submittal instructions.
• If a new or different electronic submittal process is included in the RFP, register early.
• Set your own deadline of about 3 days before the actual grant deadline so you can be sure you resolve any submittal issues with plenty of time to spare.
• Most importantly, don't let this unprecedented windfall of special grant opportunities pass you by! Don't just search grants.gov my agency for opportunities. Look at all of the available FY 09 Recovery Act grants. You will probably find one or more that is a perfect fit for your community in an unexpected category.
  

How Competitive is TOO Competitive?

There is a Request for Proposals (RFP) out right now for a Partnerships in Character Education Program (PCEP) grant. It's a research grant that funds implementation of a character education program and research documenting the success of the program in meeting established goals.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Education expects to fund only two new programs this year. The question I am often asked is this:

Given how much time and effort goes into planning and developing a high quality federal grant proposal, is it really worth it to throw your hat in the ring when only two grants will be awarded nationally?

I'll admit, the availability of funds for only two awards is extremely competitive. However, I encourage folks not to shy away from an opportunity that is right for you just because of the competitiveness. But how competitive is too competitive?

Here are some thoughts to help you decide if a competitive situation is worth your time to apply:

• Don't go for it unless the grant is really a good fit for you. If you would have to pull your collaborative partners (and maybe even people in your own organization) along to convince them to implement a new program, you may want to let this opportunity go. So, how do you know if it's the right fit? If it's something that you and your partners have already talked about doing, it may be a good fit for you. If every condition in the RFP is acceptable to your organization, and you already have a plan, it may be a good fit for you.
• Make sure you have plenty of time. While you can be successful with federal grants when you put them together on a very short timeline, that's not the best situation for those that are highly competitive. If you expect to have a real chance at being funded, you'll need to submit a very high quality proposal. That can usually not be done in one or two weeks. If you have over 30 days to put it together, you may have a chance.
• Check out the funding priorities and be sure you can address them. If the grant has an absolute priority, you must address it in order to be eligible for funding. If the grant has any competitive priorities, you should definitely be able to address them in a competitive situation. Let's take PCEP as an example. There is a competitive priority to implement an experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation design. You can get up to 20 extra points for an experimental design and up to 10 extra points for a quasi-experimental evaluation design. If you were not planning to implement an evaluation design that is at least quasi-experimental, don't bother applying. Should you apply if you can't get those extra points for the difference between a quasi-experimental and experimental design? It depends. I would recommend it only if you think you could put together a very high quality proposal that has the potential of getting all the available points. Everything must be completely in order and very well planned because you're starting with a disadvantage.

What about an invitational priority (a program priority with no explicit competitive advantage)? If you want to be competitive, address it. Period.

So, don't be afraid of highly competitive RFPs, but tread carefully.

What You Need To Know About Grants.Gov

O.k., I'll admit it. I was not very fond of http://www.grants.gov/ when it first came out. It was glitchy. It was cumbersome. It cramped my creative style.

Things have changed. Not only have major improvements been made to the whole grants.gov system, but I have adjusted to change...and now I embrace it. It helps that I have no choice.

What is grants.gov? It is the online source for finding and applying for federal grants. Most, although not quite all, federal grants must now be submitted through the grants.gov website.

Here are some important things for you to know about grants.gov:

• Your organization must be registered on grants.gov prior to submitting a federal grant through the system. Registration is not too difficult, but it is a multi-step process that can take up to a week to complete. If you think you might want to consider submitting a federal grant this year, I highly recommend that you register now. Waiting until the wee before your grant is due is a bad idea.
• If you were registered in the past, you may need to update your registration. Log on to the system and make sure that your registration is still valid. Update any authorized users and email addresses that need to be updated.
• Grants.gov has a new blog now with some nifty information. It is definitely worth checking out. For example, today I learned that there are 165 different grants closing on September 30/October 1 (63 for HHS and 101 for EPA). The system is going to be really busy (translation = expect long upload times and glitches), so we should all plan on submitting our applications early.
• You can sign up on the website to have notifications of all new grant announcements sent to you via email. You have to wade through announcements for pesticide grants and loads of medical research grants, but it also gives you access to the announcements you want as soon as they come out.
• The website now has an RSS feed so you can subscribe to find out about any updates to the website as they happen.

If you are even remotely thinking about applying for federal grants, you should check out grants.gov. Accept it. You'll be happier.