Hi AMMRL members,
Thanks once again to the many responders of my original email, which was:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: matching money, NSF and NIH proposals
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:33:36 -0600
Hi AMMRLs,
The following will be of most interest to academicians in the US.
As you likely know, NIH and NSF have dramatically changed requirements
for the SIG, CRIF and MRI instrumentation programs. The most obvious
change has been to eliminate the requirement for matching funds.
My question is simple, but the answer likely is not. Although the
program managers for these programs confirm that matching funds are not
required, it will be valuable to collect opinions as to their relevance
from this group. Does offering a match on a proposal assist in that
proposal's evaluation, increasing its chances for being funded?
I am of a mind that the answer is yes, but this is no more than a guess.
If that opinion gains support from this group, I can better lobby here
to get matching funds attached to our proposals.
I will completely follow any requests to keep answers generic and
anonymous, and will summarize the results for the group.
Thanks,
Charlie
-----------------------------------
It is no surprise that I raised a difficult question. The key factor is
learning the specific ground rules for writing proposals, and then
making the proposal as strong as possible within those rules.
I received 15 responses, from detailed to the short "I would guess...".
Most are reproduced below, stripped of personal and institutional
information. These 15 were quite split in their opinions:
9 believe matches positively assist in the success of proposals, by,
e.g., strengthening the institutional commitment. 4 of the 8 were
responses from persons with detailed knowledge of the process, e.g., by
being part of a review panel.
2 respondents were split on their own opinions.
4 believe strongly that matches do not assist, and showed concern that
including a match might not be allowed (i.e., would lead to the proposal
being rejected outright). 3 of these had been on review panels. The
other has been a Program Director at NSF, and thus is very knowledgeable.
My own conclusions are the following: Much is still not clear, and many
specific questions about matches remain unanswered. Asking specific
questions, and having detailed discussions with the Program Director
about the possibility of offering a match is the best course, and should
be done prior to making any such inclusions in a proposal.
Thanks again to all of you that responded,
Charlie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Charles G. Fry, Ph.D. Tel: (608)262-3182
Director, MR Facility Fax: (608)262-0381
Chem. Dept., 1101 University Ave, Univ. Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI 53706 USA email: fry_at_chem.wisc.edu
**********responses stripped of personal and institution info**********
**********and listed in order received************
********** 1. The "wisdom" here is that the better the institutional
commitment, the more favorably a proposal will be viewed. However,
institutional wisdom here is in short supply and what there is is highly
overrated.
********** 2. As a former program officer at NSF I can tell you the best
advice is to call the program officer in charge of the program. I
know that for the MRI's in Chemistry that would be Joan Frye [this may
have changed] (jfrye_at_nsf.gov), and she is a very helpful person!
Besides, don't you have an in with Art Ellis as Division Director of
Chemistry?
One thing I remember about matching money from some programs [at NSF] -
if the solicitation says no matching money, then you were actually not
allowed to put it in the proposal budget. You could mention support
from the institution in the narrative, but reviewers really don't care
about the money. They want to know if the project is worthwhile and
there is the support and expertise to make sure the instrumentation will
be used well.
Program officers want you to do the right thing, so that your proposal
reads better, so they have no problems answering questions like this
one. Whenever you have a question about a program solicitation call or
write the program officer. . . It may take a few days before they get
back to you, but most will do so, provided you are not calling on them
only days before a proposal deadline.
If a program officer tells you don't worry about matching funds - then I
wouldn't. I'd worry more about writing a good proposal which addresses
all the guidelines of the program.
Just my $0.02
********** 3. This is very interesting change. Are NIH and NSF planning
on fully funding instrumentation grant themselves? [the answer is yes]
In answer to your question:
In my experience with NSF, the evaluation may not be affected by
available match money, but it will certainly increase its chances for
funding.
********** 4. We put in an MRI last year and went through this same
discussion amongst ourselves. My sense is that if you offer matching,
it will may make a difference. We ultimately did not, since it was (and
continues to be) hard times at our university. The way we managed our
budget was to get a decent quote up front and keep the cost under $300K
for a 400 MHz instrument. We got the grant, but I couldn't say if the
budget made much difference or not (other than in our eyes).
However, your sponsored programs office will probably ask you not to
offer matching unless it is required, as they claim it hurts their
negotiations for the indirect cost rate. This change in matching
applies now to the CCLI program as well. It should be noted that the
dropping of cost match effectively cuts the programs (at least for NSF)
because their budget was not increased (for the MRI program, I'm not
sure about CCLI or anything from NIH). So fewer proposals are able to
be funded. An option you might consider as opposed to an explicit cost
match is to offer to purchase accessories that you plan to use with the
spectrometer (selected probes, sample changer, etc.). That might keep
your sponsored people happy and still make the point to the reviewers,
but I would talk to your program officer just to make sure it's kosher.
Good luck,
********** 5. The admin people here very adamantly state that the loss
of requirements for matching is indeed true and matching will not
increase your chances of funding. However, this is in reference to
matching for the actual acquisition of the instrument---the various
instrumentation grants provide no $$ for service and maintenance. We
are currently putting together a grant and are seeking the matching $$
to go toward things like cryogens for the first several years, part of a
staff person, and routine repairs (ie a small emergency pot for when
boards/power supplies go bad a few years down the road). Also,
renovations for siting of these large beasts are another thing to worry
about. The deans here at ... are much more willing to discuss $$ for
these things then a true "match" for the initial purchase.
BTW getting rid of the matching requirements was due to the argument
that these requirements led to the rich getting richer since only
wealthy institutions could routinely come up with 40% match. Supposedly
no discussion of match comes up in the reviews now (I asked someone who
sat on a review panel recently).
********** 6. I was on an instrumentation review panel a couple of years
ago, and we were specifically instructed to ignore any non-mandatory
match being offered in making our evaluation. It is a fairness issue
because it is something that the larger universities can likely do more
easily than the smaller ones. So what would-be matchers have to hope
for is being assigned a primary or secondary reviewer who ignores the
instructions and is favorably impressed anyway. If I were betting on
the outcome, I would bet that it would be more likely in terms of
reviewer psychology to do a small school some good than a big school.
Big schools may pursue multiple priorities simultaneously, whereas if a
small school commits significant resources, it shows they are really
serious.
But if you simply offer cash towards the instrument, and your
proposal isn't the lowest ranked one to get funded, you are throwing
your money away. The administration at my institution has moved away
from making voluntary match commitments because they believed they were
spending more on those commitments than they were getting back on the
very occasional extra grant being awarded. They don't prevent
individuals or departments from committing their own money that way, but
I have the impression that few actually do. Voluntary match sounds a
lot more appealing when it is someone else's money.
I think it is a better overall strategy to negotiate for something
with your administration that the granting agency would not pay for
anyway but that would be a long term benefit to you, e.g. a small school
might promise to create an NMR lab director position for the first time.
Although it wasn't the subject of your question, I think the
elimination of the matching requirements is pretty horrible news. We
all know what is happening to the success rates for federal research
grants. Without schools picking up part of the cost, we will have fewer,
bigger instrumentation awards out of a static budget. On the panel I
was on, out of 50 proposals, about 8-9 were going to get funded. For
the typical proposal, the school was paying about a third of the cost of
the NMR. Do the math ...
********** 7. It's like that emotional outburst in the courtroom that
the judge tells the jury to disregard. If you don't offer matching
money, the Program Director can instruct the reviewers on the panel to
disregard that fact, but at some level it has to make a difference. And
so the haves will continue to have more. Ironically, not requiring a
match may have the opposite of its intended effect: now cash-poor
institutions will not feel obligated to provide a match and thus their
proposals will suffer commensurately.
********** 8. The following opinion has the value of $0.02:
If I were on a money dispensing committee and keen on improving
the quality of science that could be done it would be impossible
to ignore the fact that for institutions A & B with matching funds I
could do twice as much good as I could for Institution C with
no matching funds even though institution C seemed more needy...
(or, I might suspect, perhaps trying to get more for less.)
********** 9. I know someone who was on a panel. The answer I got:
It is not that important. It does demonstrate institutional commitment,
but so does having a lab manager. It helps, but will not save a weak
proposal.
********** 10. I have had the same thought, but I don't have any
information. My gut feeling is that NSF will claim that it makes no
difference. But, I'm not sure I would necessarily believe that.
********** 11. We just got a NSF-MRI grant for a [instrument]. We're in
the final throes of decision to purchase a model- not sure which though.
When we applied, it was made abundantly clear that there was no
necessity to obtain matching funds. Therefore, we wrote the grant
without that former component and were successful. I know friends who
did not though, but not due to that particular factor. Not having to
provide matching funds actually made it more likely from my end to get
more support from the University (or so it seemed) as nobody here had to
fork over financial support. The onus to get the grant was entirely on
us/my department.
Being one of the PIs, I wrote the grant with a particular viewpoint to
take advantage of strengths within the department. These arguments I
believe were persuasive enough to help obtain funding. I'd be happy to
discuss our strategy with you if you like. It may or may not be
appropriate for your institution since it is more likely bigger, but it
may be.
********** 12. I have no direct or inside information, but agree with
you. In the past I know of many occasions where matching funds were not
supposed to matter but ended up being the deciding factor. Several
years ago I saw a case in which the evaluation rules explicitly excluded
matching funds from the eval. criteria. This didn't stop one reviewer
from citing the lack of a monetary match as the primary reason for
reducing the funding priority of an application. Under the euphemism
"institutional commitment" it is likely that the match will always be a
consideration.
********** 13. Respondent asked to not have email pasted into a summary.
But believes strongly in the need to contact the Program Director
before offering anything that might be construed as a match. Mentions
the possibility that "not required means not allowed".
********** 14. I have one data point to offer. We were funded for an
MRI several years ago--after the requirement for a match was dropped for
PUI's. We included in our proposal a match to renovate our NMR room. I
think it probably helped.
********** 15. My experience is a clear YES. [A colleague at another
institution] also points out the importance of match.
Received on Mon Dec 05 2005 - 15:00:10 MST