Award Notification

Your grant application has been reviewed by the funder's review panel and a decision to accept or deny the application has been made. The funder may contact you directly to let you know whether you have received a grant and that an official word of that decision is being mailed.

For Federal Grants, you can track your application on the Grants.gov web site. After the review of the proposal has been completed, here is what funding agencies may do.

Declined Proposal

First-time applications are generally less successful than second, third, or subsequent applications. This is particularly true for submissions to such agencies as the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. Establishing a successful research history is very important to these agencies. You may need to perform funded research through private foundations and/or corporations before these agencies will fund your proposal.

If a proposal is turned down by a funder, your grant officer will work with you to:

  • Revise the proposal. Often the funder's program officer will provide constructive feedback on how to strengthen your proposal.
  • If you are able to obtain the reviewers' comments, make suggested changes to your proposal based on their feedback.
  • Your grant officers will assist you in reviewing and editing a submission to another funder or to the same funder in a different funding cycle if that is deemed acceptable to do.
  • If you resubmit the proposal, it is important to respond specifically to the reviewers' comments in the narrative of the revised proposal; highlight changes made in the areas judged to be weak and clarify any information that may have been misinterpreted in the initial review.

Approved Proposal

When you receive notification of a successful award, it will be processed as follows:

  1. The grant officer will email or send an award notification to the Primary Investigator(s) or Project Lead(s).
  2. In some cases if it is contracted research, the Office of Research will work in collaboration with the PI, to negotiate the final contract.
  • The funder may notify the University to negotiate an award agreement. At that time, the Office of Research in cooperation with the principal investigator, will contact the negotiator for the funding organization. This negotiation session can be accomplished via telephone in most cases.
  • If the funder wants a minor budget change, the Office of Research in conjunction with the PI will agree in writing to the change. If the budget change is major, a corresponding reduction in the scope of work may be required, necessitating revisions to the proposal and the budget.
  1. The grant officer will work establish a grant account with the finance office.
  2. All contracts must be reviewed and approved by the University's legal counsel.
  3. Once an account is established, a notification will be sent to you and your dean or director and departmental administrator electronically.

Please note that all funding awards are received by Pacific University on behalf of the Principal Investigator(PI)/ Project Lead. Typically the funder’s protocol will be to notify the University and the PI, but in some cases, the funder may only notify the PI. If the PI receives an award notice from a funder, he or she should contact the grant officer, and immediately forward a copy of the award notice.