Sources of project support include federal, state, and local government agencies, private industry, and non-profit agencies.

The Office of the Vice President for Research is tasked with locating funding opportunities and disseminating them to faculty. Please contact Michelle Simkulet to discuss your proposal.

Types of Proposals:

All proposals that call for institutional endorsement or commitments must be submitted through RAF. The two common types of proposals are solicited and unsolicited.

• Unsolicited proposals are not submitted in response to a specific announcement or request. Although the sponsor may provide guidelines for proposal format, the PI determines the scope of the project. The sponsor may accept unsolicited proposals at any time or may specify target dates by which proposals must be submitted to be included in a review cycle.
• Solicited proposals are submitted in response to a specific sponsor announcement which outlines project requirements and deliverables. Solicitations may be in the form of a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Quotation (RFQ) or Broad Agency Announcement (BAA). The solicitation may describe general areas of research for which proposals are being accepted or may specify the scope of work and the level of funding available.

RAF needs to review the solicitation for:

• Instructions on proposal content and format budget guidelines, proposed contract terms and conditions.
• Terms and conditions specified in the solicitation are part of your proposal and will be incorporated into any resultant contract. Occasionally, a legal review of these terms will be necessary and if any terms are unacceptable to the Institute, RAF must notify the sponsor when the proposal is submitted.

Preliminary Proposal/Letter of Intent (LOI)

A sponsor sometimes requests a preliminary proposal so it can determine if they have sufficient interest in the area of research to warrant the submission of a formal proposal. Pre-proposals may include a brief overview of the research problem and methodology, a list of project personnel, and sometimes an informal budget estimate.

Since some sponsors may hold a subsequent award to the funding level suggested in your preliminary proposal, we highly recommend that you review preliminary budget estimates with your business administrator or RAF proposal grant administrator to make sure proper rates for salaries, tuition, fringe benefits, and indirect costs are used.

For all preliminary proposals/LOIs, PIs should create a Cayuse SP record as a notification to RAF. Preliminary proposals that do not require specific institutional endorsement or institutional commitment, will not be routed for approval in Cayuse SP until a full proposal is requested.

* Note: that informal white papers/abstracts are not required to be entered into Cayuse SP and do not require authorization from the institute.