We all imagine that famous scientists have nary a problem winning NIH R01 grants, SBIR grants, or any other NIH grant they care to apply for. Their contributions to science are so tremendous you wonder they could ever be turned down. But in fact NIH does say no to big shots from time to time, … Read more
Making life easy for selection committee reviewers who want to skim rather than read is part of writing a winning proposal. With all the blood and sweat your team pours into creating and honing and polishing your proposal, wouldn’t you like the reviewers on the contract selection committee to read the whole thing and then, … Read more
What is ghosting? Ghosting is proposal writing jargon for showing the deficiencies in your competitors’ solutions without calling your competitors by name. Suppose, for example, that you’re competing for a NIH contract where solutions X, Y and Z are likely to be proposed as ways to fulfill the service needs described in NIH’s RFP. Your … Read more
The story goes that some years back one of the federal agencies — I think it might have been NIH — was surprised by the overwhelming number of companies that responded to the RFP for a particular contract. There were way more competitors than they wanted to handle. So, they thinned the herd. They eliminated … Read more