Will You Walk Into My Parlor? said the Giant Scary Monster RFP to the Grant Writer
U.S. Federal grants are beasts, and an entirely different species than foundation, local, or state government grants. They’re weird beasts, constrained by 100 different nit-picking rules that somehow don’t prevent them from eating your entire grants team alive. When people ask me about whether they should apply for federal funding, my instinct is usually to shout ‘Run! Save yourself!’. But as everyone knows, federal grants are big money. Big enough money that I can usually suppress my first instinct and give people actual advice based on their situation. If you’re wondering if you should apply for a federal grant, I can’t give you that answer here. I do have a checklist to help you decide.
Instead here I’m going to talk about the very first step in taming the federal grant monster. And it’s not even any part of the application! It’s the three different sets of pre-applications you have to submit in order to register for permission to submit a federal grant. Yes, you read that right. Now you start to see why I want to tell people to run.
In order to submit a grant application through grants.gov, the system most federal grants are processed through, you need three things: a DUNS number, a SAM registration, and a grants.gov registration. You cannot apply to them simultaneously. You apply in order and receive approvals for them in order. In every federal grant RFP there is a note about this, with the instructions that registering for grants.gov can take up to two weeks. If you have gone into the system to poke around, and registered yourself as a user, which happens instantaneously, you may be tempted to ignore these instructions. Don’t.
Registering an organization profile really can take two weeks or more, because to do that, you need to have a DUNS number and a SAM registration first. All this information is on each individual registration site, but below is an overview of all three steps, so you can see at a glance what you’ll need.
Step One: Request a DUNS Number
The easiest step. You’ll need to go to this website and have at hand:
The country your organization is registered in
The state your organization is registered in and current physical address
Your official business name (what you were incorporated under)
Two forms of documentation, either Secretary of State Articles of Incorporation, TIN Confirmation Letter, EIN Confirmation Letter, DBA Filing, Lease Agreement, or Utility Bill
That’s it. You’ll have to enter in contact information for an individual at your organization and submit your two documents. You’ll receive an email with your DUNS number when it is processed.
Step Two: Register in SAM
This step is deeply annoying. The Pentagon procurement people get involved, and you’ll need a lot of organizational details that are not readily accessible. You register here, first as an individual, and then as an organization, and will need to have on hand:
Your DUNS number
A Taxpayer Identification Number (usually an EIN)
Your bank account routing number, account number, and account type
Information about your organization legal structure (how you are registered) and executive compensation – it helps to have your Secretary of State registration available to refer to.
A notarized letter, submitted within 60 days of applying online
Step Three: Grants.gov
Also annoying, though slightly less annoying than SAM. You’ll again need to register first as an individual and then as an organization. Now, the good news is, there are surprisingly decent tutorials available on the grants.gov website to walk you through part of the process, found here.
You should start here, and will need:
Your DUNS number
Your SAM registration number/CAGE number (assigned when you get registered in SAM)
The name and contact information for an EBiz Point of Contact (POC). These are the person who can sign on behalf of your organization. They must be registered as individuals in grants.gov.
This last piece is key. Registering in grants.gov is not actually that bad. What is confusing and time consuming is the roles piece. In most organizations the person writing and submitting a federal application is not the authorized representative, who is often the Executive Director or even CEO, because they are legally able to sign a contract for the organization. So that person has to be registered, and then available to approve additional people and roles for the organization within the system. If you are the program manager, and you are the one uploading the application, you need to register, and then request that the EBiz POC approve your role within the organization in order to link you to the organizational profile. That approval process can take 48 hours, so if you’re registering the day a proposal is due and your EBiz POC is on vacation, and no one knows their login credentials to go in and approve your profile, you’re out of luck.
Once you have gone through all that, you are able to complete big giant proposals to submit for consideration for federal funding! Yes, you’ve probably forgotten by the time you get through all of the above, but this was all just to be set up to apply. The application is a whole other step.
Does all this sound overwhelming? It doesn’t have to be! Future Funding will be holding a webinar on federal grants 101 in March. If you’re interested in learning more, sign up here to receive details.
