It’s always wise to talk with your program officer (PO) about your idea or proposal! We help you get over any anxiety about interacting with them (they are real people!), how to best share all the info they need, and how to get on their calendar.

Overwhelmed by the solicitation and PAPPG (Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide)? We feel you! We can provide an outline of the proposal text with all the required and recommended sections for you to work in - to get a jump start and make sure you’re not missing anything.

And did we mention the number of different documents you’re required to submit for each principal investigator (PI), institution, and proposal?! And how they continually change with every PAPPG revision? We can help with a concise checklist of everything you need - and even help you create and improve them! (See “Ancillary Documents” below!)

When you and your collaborators finish and submit your proposal, you would like to still be friends! Hand us the work of pestering, setting and enforcing deadlines (especially for those busy senior researchers who don’t . . . quite . . . always . . . show up?), keeping track of everything that still needs to be done, and giving critical feedback - so you can focus on the science!

If you don’t have great sponsored projects support, we can help you upload all the documents, pick the program details and any co-review programs, link collaborative proposals, enter your budget, and more!

If you need proposal content from colleagues who aren’t great or fast writers, or prefer not to write for whatever reason, we interview them on Zoom and then write up their thoughts into text for your proposal!

Clear organization, strong arguments, specificity, alignment with the solicitation, and tight integration between your text and budget are just some of the essential elements of a winning proposal. But it’s hard to see the forest for the trees if you’ve been working on your proposal for weeks! Let us whip your text into shape.

One of our most popular services! Worried that reviewers will tear your proposal apart? Let us do it first and send it back to you so you can revise BEFORE you submit! We’ll put on our “crabby-pants reviewer” personas and pick at every weakness we can find - misalignment with the solicitation or your budget, vagueness, repetition, irrelevance, weakness, missing logic, poor organization, and much, much more - to transform your proposal and get the reviewers on your side!

The solicitation says your proposed Broader Impacts should be “consistent with research and best practices.” Uh-oh - you’re not familiar with the literature on broadening participation, pedagogy, or informal education and outreach. Let us find some papers you can cite and use to sharpen your proposed work! We can make it even easier by providing a synopsis of each and how it articulates with your goals.

You know how to write about your science, but not so much about broadening participation, workforce development, informal education, or use of science to inform policy. Let us write your Broader Impacts section! We can provide a concise description, add a literature basis, and even find additional Broader Impacts that “accrue” from your work that you might not have considered!

One of our most popular services! There are a zillion different things that count as Broader Impacts. Which should you choose? How many should you do? How big should you go? How much of your budget? How can you ensure your Broader Impacts get done, and have the impact you want? Our unique approach to Broader Impacts design considers your values, your team, your institutional context, and your budget to create a plan that you’ll enjoy putting into action, whether you want to push the envelope or stay in your comfort zone.

“Ask for what you need” is the classic NSF response to “how big should my budget be?” Frustrating, but actually great advice. We help you “build your proposal from the budget up” to make sure you are asking for exactly what you need, integrating well with your text, and not over- or under-promising. We can also answer questions about what’s an allowable expense, how you might be able to save money on indirect costs (“overhead”), how much detail to include in your budget, and where in the NSF budget to put each and every item.

Planning ambitious Broader Impacts but don’t want to run the activities yourself? When your proposal is funded, we can manage your team and activities to ensure that you hit milestones and make the impacts you promised!

 Your Biosketch, Synergistic Activities, Facilities document, Data Management Plan, Mentoring Plan, and other ancillary docs shouldn’t be a rushed afterthought - they are places to showcase your team’s strengths and underline what you’ve said in your proposal! We take a critical look to make sure you’re wringing every last gram of persuasive power out of them!

The Biosketch (or, for your non-academic partners, résumé), Current and Pending (C&P), Synergistic Activities, and Collaborators and Other Affiliations (COA) documents are a pain in the butt, especially with the recent requirement to use SciENcv to build the first two. We can support your academic and non-academic partners (especially new investigators and folks from emerging research institutions!) to complete their documents as painlessly as possible.

Are all your t’s crossed and i’s dotted? Will your proposal be “returned without review” for a technicality? We can run checks in support of, or in advance of, your sponsored projects office, or in place of one if you’re a small business or other type of organization that doesn’t have sponsored projects professionals!

One of our most popular services! What’s your long-term research strategy? What’s your next step? Would you like to build better habits in communicating with NSF program officers, engaging with community partners, or starting to prepare your proposal earlier? Our holistic approach helps you reach your goals, stay balanced, and get your next proposal funded!

One of our most popular services! Believe it or not, all NSF proposals should have some level of evaluation - whether by an external evaluator (sometimes specified) or simply through your own recordkeeping. We build the evaluation plan as you develop your proposal to tweak your goals and objectives into a perfect match with the eval questions and methods.

If you can’t engage us at proposal-writing time, we can still provide you with standard text that describes how we’ll work with you when your proposal is funded to create a great evaluation plan together.

We understand that every project has its unique challenges and requirements. If our listed services don't quite align with your needs, we're more than happy to discuss customized solutions tailored specifically for you. Our team thrives on collaboration and is always eager to explore new ideas.