Proposal Submittal Process

Proposal Development and Submission

Research & Sponsored Program Development is available to help get your proposal submitted so you can get funded and start work on your project.

Things to Consider when Submitting a Proposal

Funding organizations want to support research and scholarly activity
Proposal writing is persuasive writing
Think like a reviewer
Plan ahead
Prepare supporting documentation in advance when possible
Review the request for proposal carefully
Course buyout requests must be discussed with Department/College

Process

Follow the request for proposal and create the requested documents
Enter the proposal in UND's online Novelution proposal submission system to capture the appropriate University signatures. Novelution is a separate system from the sponsor proposal portal system.
Enter the components of the proposal in the appropriate online system
- Online Proposal Portals:
  - Grants.gov is available for all federal agencies
  - ASSIST is also available for National Institutes of Health
  - Research.gov is also available for National Science Foundation
  - Various other sites are available for foundations and non-federal agencies
Research & Sponsored Program Development strongly recommends that Research.gov be used for all National Science Foundation (NSF) proposals. As the NSF managed system, Research.gov performs extensive error checking including formatting and missing documents before a proposal is able to be finalized and submitted. Grants.gov is a general system that handles proposal processing for many government agencies and error checking is minimal at the time of submission. Grants.gov accepts NSF proposals as-is and forwards them to Research.gov for error checking. This creates a delay between the time of submission and the acceptance of the proposal by NSF. Receiving a Grants.gov Tracking Number does not mean the proposal was successfully accepted by NSF. Error messages may be generated after the Grants.gov submission when the transfer to Research.gov is done by the system, and these errors need to be corrected and the application resubmitted before the published deadline in order to be accepted by NSF.

Proposal Preparation Contact

For questions regarding proposal preparation, contact Karen Katrinak at vpr.proposals@UND.edu or (701) 777-2505.