This is a time of unprecedented uncertainty in the grant world, with the government promising to be much more involved in the running of federal funding agencies. The uncertainty is deterring many potential applicants from applying at this time. And that is precisely the reason why now is the best time to submit.

As you may have heard, the new administration has recently tried to impose that government funding agencies reduce their allowable indirect cost rates for grantees to 15%. This is one of the biggest changes that the government has made in recent memory to how government agencies function and what they do with their funding budgets. Together with other planned tectonic shifts that this government is planning across federally-funded agencies, this increased government involvement is expected to have far reaching implications. Due to the ensuing legal pushback, it is not clear where this stands and whether and how it will be implemented. Nevertheless, it is still worth discussing, as I believe this will likely go through eventually, in one form or another.

Research grants are essentially free money, in that you don’t have any obligations to the funding agency and you don’t dilute the ownership of your company, so they can be a great source of funding. But free money is by no means easy money. While we all know that time is money, consider also that money is time: if you want to get money, you need to invest the time.