All proposal submissions by College faculty or staff must be submitted to the Grants Office for review prior to submission to the funder. All submissions must be submitted through the Grants Office.

Many funders, including Federal agencies, require proposals to be electronically prepared and submitted. With guidance from the Grants Office, Grant coordinators should review the individual funder’s guidelines for information about the required method of submission. The funding agency’s guidelines will also include information about the necessary file format for documents submitted with the proposal. This process is coordinated by the Grants Office.

Paper Submission: While very rare, some funders may still require paper copies. In this case, when all approvals are in hand, the President, or other designated College signatory, only is authorized to sign the proposal on behalf of the College. The Grants Office will prepare and attach a transmittal letter to each proposal. This standard letter refers the agency to the Grants Coordinator for technical matters and to the Grants Office for administrative or contractual matters. Some funding agencies require a specific number of copies of the formal proposal to be submitted along with one or more signed copies. The appropriate number of copies can be found in the sponsor's guidelines.

Electronic Submission: Funding agencies that offer or mandate electronic proposal submission may use Grants.gov or their own individual systems. Therefore, specifics of submission protocols will vary. The Grants Office is responsible for electronically submitting the proposal to the sponsoring agency. The Grants Coordinator will receive an electronic confirmation of the submission.

Deadlines: Many funding agencies have specific deadlines for proposal submission. This information is available directly from the agency. Note that all requests for proposals (RFP) have strict deadlines that cannot be modified; this information is always in the RFP application package obtainable from the funding agency.