Proposal Development

Pre-award will collaborate closely with principal investigators (PIs) and project teams to develop an effective and comprehensive plan for your project and proposal submission. 

Important Tips and Tricks

  • Explain the project in a way that is convincing to the reader.
  • Grant writing should be logical, persuasive, concise and clear.
  • Project goals should be realistic in relation to the proposed project period and budget.
  • Peer reviewing is arduous — grab their attention early and sell your idea!
    • Aim to address what you’re proposing and why it’s important in the first page or two.
    • Consider your statement of need. In the case of government funding, you are asking the agency to dedicate taxpayer money to your project; why is yours more deserving than others?
  • Be organized and utilize effective signposting.
    • Follow the funding opportunity/sponsor guidelines for section organization.
    • Write clear headings and use sub-headings, short paragraphs and other techniques to make the application as easy to navigate as possible.
    • Use diagrams, figures, and tables — with appropriate legends — to assist reviewers in understanding complex information.
    • Use bullets and numbered lists.
    • Indents, bold print and colored text add readability and reduce reviewer fatigue.
  • Establish a working timeline for all proposal components.
    • If possible, allow time to circulate drafts to trusted colleagues and mentors for review. 

Proposal Components

Proposal components are funder dependent, sometimes unique to the individual funding opportunity. The OSPR has boilerplate language and templates on file to assist with supplemental documents.

Most Proposals Include the Following

  • Project Abstract / Summary
  • Proposal / Project Narrative
    • With at least 30 days’ notice, the OSPR pre-award team can provide support by reading the narrative and offering feedback for clarity and/or to ensure it thoroughly addresses the requirements of the funding opportunity announcement.  
  • Budget and Budget Justification
  • Curriculum Vitae / Resume / Biographical Sketch
  • Letters of Commitment / Support
    • Some funding opportunities require letters of commitment from collaborators, while others require institutional letters of support.
    • The Office of Sponsored Programs and Research (OSPR) will assist with the process if letters are required from your chair, dean, provost or president.

Compliance Areas

The PI is responsible for adhering to applicable federal regulations if the proposed work involves human subjects, animal subjects, biological safety or international research. Refer to the OSPR Compliance topic pages for additional information:

The OSPR will assist with navigating sponsor requirements for research involving compliance areas. 

National Science Foundation (NSF)

The 2024 version of the PAPPG (NSF 24-1) is effective for proposals submitted or due on or after May 20, 2024.

You are encouraged to review the by-chapter summary of changes provided in the Introduction section of the PAPPG.

Research.gov is the NSF community's online grants management system. 

NSF updated its RECR training requirements, effective for proposals submitted on or after July 31, 2023. All PIs and Co-PIs, and NSF-supported personnel (including students engaging in research activities) must complete RECR training and mandates that the training cover mentor training and mentorship.

The OSPR recommends that faculty members complete the training after they submit a proposal so that the requirement is met upon award. TU offers several RECR training courses through TU's CITI training modules:

  • Biomedical Responsible Conduct of Research Course
  • Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research Course
  • Physical Science Responsible Conduct of Research Course
  • Humanities Responsible Conduct of Research Course
  • Responsible Conduct of Research for Engineers

TU faculty, staff and students can log into CITI with their NetID and password.

PIs are responsible for ensuring that students and other personnel complete the training requirement when working on an NSF award. The NSF recommends that PIs supplement any online training with high impact learning activities and / or discussion. 

NSF now requires proposers certify that they have a plan for creating and maintaining Safe and Inclusive Working Environment(s) for projects that propose conducting off-campus or off-site research. For the purposes of this requirement, off-campus or off-site research is defined as data / information / samples being collected off-campus or off-site, such as fieldwork and research activities on vessels and aircraft.

The PI and OSPR will keep the plan on file. It is not submitted to NSF for review as part of the proposal, unless otherwise required by a specific solicitation. If an award is made, the plan for the proposal must be disseminated to individuals participating in the off-campus or off-site research prior to departure.

Use this Template for TU 

The OSPR has developed a Safe and Inclusive Working Environments Plan template (PDF) for TU principal investigators/project teams proposing such projects.

What the Plan Should Address

The plan must describe how the following types of behavior will be addressed:

  1. Abuse of any person, including, but not limited to, harassment, stalking, bullying, or hazing of any kind, whether the behavior is carried out verbally, physically, electronically or in written form; or
  2. Conduct that is unwelcome, offensive, indecent, obscene or disorderly.

Please review the TU template and NSF resource pages linked above for additional guidance in developing your plan. 

References and Resources:

Some NSF proposal types or funding opportunities may require submission of a Concept Outline prior to submission of a full proposal. A Concept Outline is a concise summary of a project idea that contains a title, the proposed proposal type, information about the prospective PI(s), potentially germane NSF organizational unit(s), keywords, a brief narrative description of the idea, and a brief description of how the idea fits the proposed proposal type or funding opportunity. The narrative description of the idea may outline the goals and general approaches of the project, anticipated uses of funding, and how the work satisfies the NSB-approved Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria.

The primary purposes of requiring a Concept Outline are to ensure that the concept being proposed by the prospective PI is appropriate for the proposal type/funding opportunity, and to help reduce the administrative burden associated with submission of a full proposal. Concept Outlines are considered by cognizant NSF program officers to determine the appropriateness of the work to the proposal type/funding opportunity. The prospective PI will receive an email that specifies whether a full proposal may be submitted.

Concept Outlines are submitted either by email to a designated address or via the Program Suitability and Proposal Concept Tool (ProSPCT). ProSPCT consists of a dashboard and webform for prospective PIs to prepare, send, and track the status of their Concept Outline submissions. The ProSPCT webform uses structured fields, drop-down selections, validations, and text entry fields with character count limits to ensure users have provided the minimal complete information and met formatting requirements based on the selected proposal type prior to submitting the Concept Outline.

Proposals to NSF must include three documents outlined on this page for each of the senior personnel involved in the proposal.

Refer to the NSF Pre-award and Post-award Disclosures Relating to the Biographical Sketch and Current and Pending (Other) Support for additional guidance preparing those sections.

Biographical Sketch (Biosketch)

Proposers must use SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae) for the biosketch.

SciENcv will produce an NSF-compliant PDF version of the biosketch. Senior personnel must prepare, save, certify and submit these documents as part of their proposal via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

Synergistic Activities - Effective for proposals due on or after May 20, 2024

The Synergistic Activities section has been removed from the biographical sketch. This information must now be submitted as a separate document for all individuals designated as senior/key persons. The new document should be up to one-page that includes a list of up to five distinct examples that demonstrates the broader impact of the individual's professional and scholarly activities that focus on the integration and transfer of knowledge as well as its creation.

Current and Pending Support (CPS)

Proposers must use SciENcv (Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae) for CPS.

SciENcv will produce an NSF-compliant PDF version of the CPS. Senior personnel must prepare, save, certify and submit these documents as part of their proposal via Research.gov or Grants.gov.

NSF programs officers (POs) will request updated CPS information prior to making a funding recommendation, in accordance with NSPM-33 Implementation Guidance. The OSPR Pre-Award team will work with project personnel to draft updated CPS documents at the request of NSF POs.

Collaborators and Other Affiliations (COA)

This document contains a table of an individual’s collaborators, such as their advisors, co-authors and students. NSF uses collaborators and other affiliations information during the merit review process to help manage reviewer selection.

Letters of collaboration should be limited to stating the intent to collaborate and should not contain endorsements or evaluation of the proposed project.

Letters must adhere to NSF’s required format:

"If the proposal submitted by Dr. [insert the full name of the Principal Investigator] entitled [insert the proposal title] is selected for funding by NSF, it is my intent to collaborate and/or commit resources as detailed in the Project Description or the Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources section of the proposal."

This section of the proposal is used to assess the adequacy of the resources available to perform the effort proposed to satisfy both the intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. Proposers should describe only those resources that are directly applicable.

The OSPR maintains an extensive archive of facilities, equipment and other resources documents that can be adapted for specific proposals.

The DMP should describe how the proposal will conform to NSF's policy on the dissemination and sharing of research results. Data management requirements and plans specific to the Directorate, Office, Division, Program or other NSF unit, relevant to a proposal are available on the NSF website.

Additional Resources:

A collaborative proposal is one in which investigators from two or more organizations wish to collaborate on a unified research project. Collaborative proposals may be submitted to NSF in one of two methods:

Single Proposal (Subawards)

  • A single award is requested.
  • The lead organization will administer subawards to the collaborating organizations.
  • The lead organization’s will submit an integrated research project in a single, focused proposal.
  •  A single investigator bears primary responsibility for the administration of the award and discussions with NSF, and, at the discretion of the organizations involved, investigators from any of the participating organizations may be designated as co-PIs.

Simultaneous Submission (Linked)

  • Each organization requests a separate award.
  • Multiple organizations will submit a unified set of certain proposal sections, as well as information unique to each organization as specified below.
    • Lead Organization
      • Project Summary
      • Project Description
      • References Cited
      • Biographical Sketch(es)
      • Budget and Budget Justification
      • Current and Pending Support
      • Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources
      • Data Management Plan
      • Postdoctoral Mentoring Plan (if applicable)
      • Collaborators & Other Affiliations Information
    • Non-Lead Organization(s)
      • Biographical Sketch(es)
      • Budget and Budget Justification
      • Current and Pending Support
      • Facilities, Equipment and Other Resources
      • Collaborators & Other Affiliations Information
  • Project title must begin with the words "Collaborative Research:”. 
  • If funded, both lead and non-lead organizations are required to submit separate annual and final project reports. These reports should reference the work of the collaborative, while focusing on the distinct work conducted at each funded organization.

All collaborative proposals must clearly describe the roles to be played by the other organizations, specify the managerial arrangements, and explain the advantages of the multi-organizational effort within the Project Description.

COSEE Networked Ocean World (COSEE NOW) created the BI Wizard to provide an interface that guides users through a series of well-defined steps necessary for the construction and implementation of a broader impact statement required in research proposals. The goal is to help researchers identify their target audience and plan appropriate BI activities, budget, objectives and evaluation plan. 

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

NIH announced that its simplified review framework will be implemented for grant recipients deadlines of January 25, 2023 and beyond. The five current review criteria (Significance, Innovation, Approach, Investigator, and Environment) are being reorganized into three broader factors to help reviewers focus on crucial questions that determine scientific merit:

  1. Importance of the Research (Significance and Innovation), factor score 1-9
  2. Rigor and Feasibility (Approach), factor score 1-9,
  3. Expertise and Resources (Investigator and Environment), either rated as sufficient for the proposed research or not
One goal of this simplified framework is to lessen the influence of general scientific reputation of a PI on application review. The new framework simplifies the consideration of an investigator's research experience into a binary choice of sufficient or not, potentially giving more PIs with less experience a chance to explore their research ideas.

Use the application instructions in conjunction with guidance in the funding opportunity to submit grant applications to NIH, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The NIH explains the three most common types of Research Projects (R): the NIH standard independent R01, the smaller R03, and the exploratory / developmental research R21 activity codes.
As you build your team, be sure to document agreements with your contributors and their roles. It is important to understand different team roles for colleagues on NIH proposals.

eRA Commons is a system managed by NIH that allows applicants, recipients and federal staff to securely share, manage and process grant-related information.

Be sure to keep your eRA Commons profile updated as sections of your application in the submission system used by NIH will automatically populate with information from your eRA account.

ASSIST is the system used to prepare and submit applications electronically to NIH and other Public Health Service agencies.

The OSPR pre-award team member will complete data entry and final document uploads in ASSIST for submission.

A biosketch documents an individual’s qualifications and experience for a specific role in a project. 

NIH requires submission of a biosketch for each proposed senior/key personnel and other significant contributor on a grant application. Some funding opportunities or programs may also request biosketches for additional personnel (e.g., participating faculty biosketch attachment for institutional training awards).

NIH biosketches must conform to a specific format. Applicants and recipients can use the provided format pages to prepare their biosketch attachments or can use SciENcv, a tool used to develop and automatically format biosketches according to NIH requirements.

Information on other active and pending support may be requested (often as part of just-in-time procedures for grant applications or in progress reports) to ensure there is no scientific, budgetary or commitment overlap. “Other Support” is sometimes referred to as “current and pending support” or “active and pending support.”

The OSPR Pre-Award team will work with project personnel to draft other support documents at the request of NIH.

Describe how the scientific environment in which the research will be done contributes to the probability of success (e.g., institutional support, physical resources and intellectual rapport). In describing the scientific environment in which the work will be done, discuss ways in which the proposed studies will benefit from unique features of the scientific environment or from unique subject populations or how studies will employ useful collaborative arrangements.

The OSPR maintains an extensive archive of facilities and other resources documents that can be adapted for specific proposals.

List major items of equipment already available for this project and, if appropriate, identify the equipment’s location and pertinent capabilities.

The OSPR maintains and extensive archive of equipment documents that can be adapted for specific proposals.

Applicants proposing to conduct research that will generate scientific data are subject to the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy. Refer to the list of NIH activity codes subject to the DMS Policy and the specific funding opportunity announcement.

The DMS Plan should explain how scientific data generated by research projects will be managed and which of these scientific data and accompanying metadata will be shared. The DMS Plan becomes a term and condition of the award if your proposal is selected for funding. 

If the proposed DMS Plan activities will incur costs, the budget justification must include a separate section (no more than half a page) clearly labeled as “Data Management and Sharing Justification” followed by the estimated dollar amount that summarizes the type and amount of scientific data to be preserved and shared and the name of the established repository(ies) where they will be preserved and shared.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAD) provides sample applications across multiple NIH funding mechanisms and links to additional information from other NIH agencies.

NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, investing more than $32 billion a year to enhance life, and reduce illness and disability. The OSPR recommends reviewing the PowerPoint presentation given by NIH Scientific Review Officers (SR)) during a visit to TU. 

The slides provide an overview for navigating NIH funding opportunities, tips for submitting a competitive proposal, and the peer review process / timeline.

Towson University remains eligible for NIH AREA /REAP grants, and this status in not expected to change soon.

NIH AREA / REAP grants support small-scale research projects at educational institutions that provide baccalaureate or advanced degrees for a significant number of the nation’s research scientists but that have not been major recipients of NIH support. Organizational eligibility is determined by the amount of NIH funding received by all the non-health components of the institution at the time of application submission. TU remains eligible as long as that amount is less than $6 million per year (in both direct and F&A / indirect costs) in 4 of the last 7 years.

For a Principal Investigator (PI) to be eligible, they must:

  • Have a primary appointment at the R15-eligible institution.
  • Not be the PI of an active NIH research grant at the time of an R15 award, though they may be one of the Key Personnel for an active NIH grant held by another PD/PI.

The REAP mechanism differs from AREA, in that it places emphasis on providing biomedical research experiences primarily for health professional, undergraduate and graduate students and enhancing the research environment at applicant institutions.

Other Federal Agencies

NIJ awards grants and cooperative agreements for various research, development, and evaluation projects; and fellowship programs through competitive solicitations.

Supporting research in science and technology is an important part of NASA's overall mission. NASA solicits this research through the release of various research announcements in a wide range of science and technology disciplines. 

Working with the Towson University Foundation (TUF)

Some foundations and corporations require that grants be awarded to a 501(c)(3) organization. In such cases, the Towson University Foundation (TUF) will be the primary applicant on behalf of the University and will collaborate with the OSPR to develop the budget and route for internal approvals.

The TU Development office has provided guidance documents to assist faculty to assess project readiness and prepare for submissions to private funders: