You’ve Submitted Your Proposal—Now What?
October 28, 2019
After you submit your grant proposal, you may be tired of thinking about it and relieved the process is behind you. And while the process is mostly over, there are a few remaining things to be done between the time you submit the proposal and the time you hear back about its fate. Below are our suggestions for some post-submission activities to finish up the process.
POST-SUBMISSION TASK LIST
The best time to clean up your files is immediately after you submit a proposal. Right after you finish a proposal, everything you’ve collected as part of the process is very familiar. You can easily cite where different background materials came from, you remember the significance of different saved versions of the proposal, and you know why certain choices were made related to the proposal’s content and structure.
Because everything is so clear to you immediately after the proposal, it can be tempting to think you’ll never forget the history of the proposal and why you did things the way you did. However, you will forget, and probably much sooner than you think unless you take time after the proposal goes in to do some housekeeping.
Information Management
Review your saved proposal drafts: If you’ve saved multiple versions of the proposal, decide which versions should be kept and delete the rest. In addition to the submitted version of the proposal, you should save at least the penultimate draft and maybe one other draft.
Check the file names: When you are actively working on a proposal, you may have used an informal naming convention for your files. Informal can work during the proposal process when everyone knows what the name represents. However, after a proposal goes in, you’ll want to go through the proposal drafts—especially the final draft—to make sure it’s clear from the file name what the document is, when it was created, and when it was last updated. In the document itself, you may want to add identifying information such as the name of the writer(s) and the version number to the document’s footer, or, if you want the information accessible but hidden, in the document’s properties.
Decide on your file structure and content: Knowing what to save is part of the puzzle. Knowing how and where to store it is the second part. Depending on your organization and what systems it already has in place, this housekeeping task may be more about applying your organization’s existing policies than creating a new process. If your organization has not already stipulated what should be saved as part of every proposal submission, you’ll want to decide not only what to keep from each proposal submission but also how to organize the information. For example, you may want to have a separate folder for each proposal that contains the submitted copy of the narrative proposal (usually a PDF) and an editable version (usually in Word), copies of proposal attachments, and any correspondence with the donor. Because salary information is included as part of the typical proposal budget, it may be appropriate to store the budget elsewhere in a password-protected file.
Create an archive folder: You may have collected materials during the proposal process, such as proposal notes and early outlines, that you may be hesitant to delete. For these materials, an archive folder can be helpful. Use the archive folder to store things you are not ready to let go of or information that would be hard to recreate if needed again. As with all your folders, it’s a good idea to visit the archive folder periodically to see if anything should be deleted or moved to another location.
Feedback on the Process
Another critical post-submission task is to hold a debrief meeting to collect feedback on how the proposal process went. If the proposal process did not go well, it can be intimidating to think about holding a group meeting to review the experience. To make what could be a difficult discussion a little less difficult, before you schedule the debrief meeting, collect feedback anonymously through a survey. You can use free tools such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey to create the survey, circulate it, and evaluate the results. At the debrief meeting, which should include everyone who had a role in the proposal, you can present the survey results to start things off and then transition to discussing potential solutions for the identified problems.
One thing to keep in mind about debrief meetings is that it is important to keep the discussion focused on what happened rather than who did what. Did someone do something that led to the process being more difficult than it needed to be? Probably, but the debrief meeting will not be productive if turns into a finger-pointing session. Furthermore, what the team may perceive as a mistake by a specific individual is often a sign of a process failure such as poor team communication.
Proposal debriefs tend to have familiar themes, and communication issues usually come in at the top of the list. Another theme that frequently comes up in debrief meetings is technology failures (e.g., Sharepoint sites crashing, team members unable to access a shared drive, etc.). While some issues around technology will be difficult to solve, you may be able to solve some things that can improve team communication and online collaboration for the next proposal.
Email Monitoring
The final post-submission step has to do with the funder. When you submit a proposal by email, it’s always a good idea to copy several people from your organization on the email message. By doing so, the hope is that the funder will “reply all” when it contacts your organization regarding your submission, lessening the chance that the email will be missed.
Regardless of whether you copy several people on the email submission email, the funder may choose to send their email to one person, which could be person who submitted the proposal (which could be a proposal manager) or the person listed in the proposal as your organization’s authorized representative.
As a precaution in case the funder chooses to send an email to a single person instead of the full distribution list, after the proposal goes in, the inbox and spam folder of the person who submitted the proposal—and the organizational contact (if different)—will need to be monitored daily. Since it may take weeks or months before you hear back from the funder, you will need to have a plan to monitor these inboxes during periods when these key contacts are on personal leave or traveling on business. Sometimes a funder will send an email with follow-up questions about your proposal and ask that you respond to the questions within 24-to-48 hours. To give yourself the maximum amount of time to respond, it’s essential to catch the emails as soon as possible.
OTHER TASKS TO CONSIDER
Prepare for Funder Questions
If you think a funder may ask you for additional information, possibly even requesting a revised proposal, another task to add to your list is to try to anticipate the questions the funder might have and begin to formulate your response. For some proposals, you may not be able to guess what kinds of questions the funder may have; in these situations, you can focus on organizing your files so it will be easier to find relevant information if you need to revise your proposal. In other cases, you may have identified weaknesses in your proposal that could trigger the funder to ask for clarification or revisions.
Plan for Project Implementation
Finally, if you will need to hire staff to implement the proposed project, another post-submission task is to draft job descriptions so they will be ready to go if your proposal is funded.
…AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST, HOW ABOUT SCHEDULING A CELEBRATION?
Preparing a proposal can take a lot out of a person, a team, and an organization. Why not hold a social event to mark the proposal’s successful submission? The proposal may have consumed weeks of your life. Take time to celebrate that it is finally done!
