The instructions might say that the proposals are due at 5pm, so you figure you’ve got plenty of time. But things often go wrong. You should manage your workload to be done with your entire proposal one full business day before the deadline. I emphasized business day because if something goes wrong, you will probably need assistance from faculty and staff who are unavailable to navigate your crisis after hours or on the weekend. Common crisis I see in the 11th hour include:
- the sponsor’s submission website is slow
- the sponsor’s website introduces errors into your text and you have to fiddle with your files to make it work
- a colleague makes a seemingly simple change to the draft that has ripple effects to the entire proposal (increases the budget, adds half a page to the page limit, introduces content that requires additional forms such as human subjects protections)
- a key player in the submission gets sick and is unable to contribute, leaving complex components unfinished
- you lose version control and have to revert back to the last saved version and try to rewrite from memory
The list of pitfalls is endless. Plan to submit one day early!
