Why is SPA instituting a five day deadline for Grants.gov submissions?
With the federal requirements to submit electronic proposals through Grants.gov, more time will be needed to process these proposals in order to meet sponsor deadlines and allow for error checking at both Grants.gov and the federal agencies. SPA will not be using the entire five day lead time to process Grants.gov proposals but must process them such that there is time to allow for repeated submissions of the same proposal due to proposal errors or system delays and still meet the sponsor’s deadline. By law, the federal government must move all of its grant applications to electronic processes by fall 2007. While Grants.gov will be the receipting mechanism, each federal agency will have its own unique mechanism to review for errors and allow time to correct the final proposal prior to the deadline. On-time submission of applications is dependent on the receipt of “clean” proposals at Grants.gov by the federal agency deadline. “Clean” proposals are those which are considered error-free
