The transition to electronic application submission has heightened the NIH, AHRQ and NIOSH’s awareness of challenges posed by having very large numbers of incoming grant applications on any single day.

The agency currently spreads the workload involved with receiving incoming grant applications across three annual council rounds that include multiple submission dates for each round. However, some of its standing receipt dates allow for six to eight thousand applications to be submitted for a single date. This volume has the potential to cause bottlenecks in a number of critical places: the research administration offices at the applicant institution, which must now submit all applications; Grants.gov and eRA systems, where response time may slow under heavy volume; the Grants.gov and NIH help desks, which have to handle large spikes in call volume; and the CSR Division of Receipt and Referral, which is responsible for referral of incoming applications in a timely way.

Spreading receipt dates to have a steady flow of applications rather than “boom and bust” cycles will allow many different groups to have a realistic approach to this complex process and maximize electronic system responsiveness.

A complete list of the new receipt dates for all mechanisms may be found at the following URL: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-07-001.html . Please note that for many funding mechanisms, the change is substantial, and will apply to both paper and electronic applications as of January, 2007.

The new receipt dates are based on many factors including:

The heaviest receipt dates from all agencies on Grants.gov are the first of the month, the 15th of the month, the first Friday, and last day of the month. The proposed NIH receipt dates have been intentionally offset from these dates to improve Grants.gov response times for NIH applicants.

An effort was made to use recurring days of the month for simplicity (i.e. new R01s would come in on February 5 and renewals on March 5).

The R01s, NIH’s most frequently used mechanism, were kept early in the receipt window to allow time for processing. The receipt date of the 5th of the month was chosen to be sure the bolus of submissions that come in on the receipt date and the few days prior missed Grants.gov’s heaviest volume days.

The proposed dates provide additional time for proposal development for application mechanisms often used by new investigators - R03s, R21s, and Ks.

The AREA date was already changed in the fall of 2005 so it was not moved.

For an application to be considered on time it must be received by Grants.gov by 5 p.m. local time for the applicant institution (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-050.html).

If you have any questions about the new deadline dates and how they may affect your proposal, please talk to your Sponsor Programs Administration Grants & Contracts Officer.