Questions and Responses about the 2008 Sea Grant Aquatic Invasive Species Research and Outreach Grants Competition

The preproposal competition was very competitive. To be encouraged, a research proposal had to have a score of 4.67 or better out of a possible 5.00 (5=excellent, 4=very good, 3=good, 2=fair, 1=poor). For outreach, which had different reviewers, preproposals had to score 3.80 or better.

In addition, the preproposals had to address one of the regional priorities listed in the FFO to be encouraged.

Yes. If your preproposal was discouraged, it meant the the reviewers felt a full proposal would have little chance of success, but you are eligible to submit a full proposal if you wish. If you submit, your full proposal will be judged on its own merits.

Very tight. If all encouraged applicants submit full proposals, there will be only enough money to fund 10 to 20% of these. If more applicants submit, the competition will be even tighter.

Unless the geographic distribution of awards by merit alone results in a situation that is far off balance, we generally don't let the location of the project influence the selections. This year's competition will, however, attempt to distribute projects addressing Regional Priorities more or less evenly across those Priorities. But an applicant can propose a project to address any Regional Priority or multiple Priorities, not just the Priorities of the region where he or she is located.

The Regional Priorities are written statements given in section I.B. of the Federal Funding Opportunity (FFO) announcement. They were produced by the regional panels of the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force especially for this competition. For purposes of this competition, only proposals that address one or more of the specific regional priorities written in the FFO announcement are considered to be relevant to Regional Priorities--it is not enough simply to address issues recognized as important regionally or nationally.

Yes, to have a serious chance of being selected. The FFO said that if sufficient funding and high-quality proposals were available, an attempt would be made to fund at least one project addressing a Regional Priority in each of the six regions of the country. When the FFO was written, there was a chance enough funding would be available that some proposals that didn't address Regional Priorities might also be selected, but that doesn't seem likely now. Based on the funding available and the number of proposals expected to be received, it is almost certain that all awards will go to proposals that address the Regional Priorities.

Proposals are assessed against the Regional Priorities, and determined to be "yes (relevant)" or "no (not relevant)" to each of the six Regional Priorities. If a Regional Priority listed multiple topics, a proposal is deemed relevant if it addresses any one of those topics. A proposal can be found relevant to Regional Priorities from regions other than where the proposal originated, and can be found relevant to more than one Regional Priority. The assessment of relevance to Regional Priorities provides a yes or no answer, and does not assess the quality or expected success of the proposal in meeting its objectives--those are questions for the separate technical evaluation.

It doesn't, directly. Relevance to Regional Priorities is a programmatic assessment that is separate from the technical evaluation.

As in past years, there is a technical evaluation factor for Importance and/or Relevance and Applicability, but this factor involves significantly more than whether a proposal addresses one of the Regional Priorities in the FFO. The technical evaluation factors used to score the proposals are:

1. Importance and/or Relevance and Applicability,
2. Technical/Scientific Merit,
3. Overall Qualifications of Applicants,
4. Project Cost, and
5. Outreach and Education.

Yes. From 2 CFR 215 of the Code of Federal Regulations,

"(d) Volunteer services furnished by professional and technical personnel, consultants, and other skilled and unskilled labor may be counted as cost sharing or matching if the service is an integral and necessary part of an approved project or program. Rates for volunteer services shall be consistent with those paid for similar work in the recipient’s organization. In those instances in which the required skills are not found in the recipient organization, rates shall be consistent with those paid for similar work in the labor market in which the recipient competes for the kind of services involved. In either case, paid fringe benefits that are reasonable, allowable, and allocable may be included in the valuation."

No. The application should propose how much will be needed each year of the project, up to the overall maximum allowed request for the entire project.

Yes. Sub-contractors or Investigators (including the Principal Investigator) can be foreign.

First, if your proposal addresses one of the Regional Priorities, you should say in your proposal which Regional Priorities you address. If it isn't immediately obvious how your proposed work addresses that Priority, you should explain. You should refer to the exact wording in the Regional Priority that your proposal addresses. If your proposal addresses the Regional Priorities of more than one region, you should describe how it addresses each of these with the same care. If your proposal addresses Regional Priorities from more than one region, it may stand a better chance of being selected.

Don't forget to list the regional priority in the subtitle of your proposal as directed in the Funding announcement. If your proposal addresses the priorities of more than region, please list them all in your subtitle.

Second, follow the format guidance in the FFO. Extra pages beyond the maximum allowed, or appendices beyond those permitted by the FFO, will be deleted before reviewers see the proposal and could make your proposal less readable.

Third, study carefully the technical evaluation factors, and write your proposal in a way that convinces independent technical expert reviewers that you should receive high scores for these five factors. This is, of course, exactly what you should do for any proposal competition.

And finally, you might want to take a look at this document, which describes some common mistakes made by applicants to the 2003 competition. Although dated, most of the observations still hold.