The Research Development (RD) team is here to support your proposal from an idea to a successfully funded research project. Be sure to contact us early in the proposal process to make the most of these resources. Our team can help with pre-proposal strategy development and proposal development.
Pre-proposal strategy development
Communicating with funding agencies
While program officers must remain impartial, they can provide feedback on your project aims and alignment with a specific funding opportunity. Even a brief phone conversation with a program officer can provide useful insights.
Over time, it can also be beneficial to establishing a trusted relationship with agency program officers relevant to your research area.
Other opportunities to engage with funders include responding to agency requests for information (RFI) and/or serving on a proposal review panel.
Facilitating partner collaboration
UCSC is an incredibly collaborative campus and we pride ourselves in both leading and supporting cutting-edge research.
Who should you partner to make your proposal competitive? Our unit can help identify gaps in your research team and connect you to potential collaborators both on and off campus.
We can also provide you with best practices for approaching new collaborations to ensure they are successful.
Making a plan for success
The RD team is here to help you envision the potential trajectory of your research.
This can include development of a five to ten year funding plan that aligns with your goals and identification of funding opportunities, including evaluation of proposal competitiveness for a given opportunity. See more about funding opportunities.
We can also provide guidance on grant writing success strategies.
Proposal development
Alignment with funding opportunity
Once a researcher contacts their RD specialist, we can help evaluate project readiness and fit for a specific research opportunity.
The RD team also partners with UCSC Foundation Relations on limited submission proposals and in cases where the university may have ongoing relationships with a foundation program officer.
Developing competitive proposals
The RD team can help develop and review project scope and design, outline resource needs, and identify competitive gaps.
When given sufficient notification, the RD team will establish internal proposal submission timelines to allow for RD review and feedback.
In cases where the RD team is notified late in the submission process, we will do our best to review a proposal for clarity and typos.
Crossing the finish line–final submission
In the final weeks leading up to a proposal submission, the RD team will help researchers focus on meeting internal deadlines and ensuring a compliant proposal.
The Proposal Administration team is responsible for working with a researcher to develop their budget and collect all proposal documents.
The Office of Sponsored Projects is responsible for the final compliance review and has the delegated authority to submit proposals.