Proposal Development Services
The Office of Research & Economic Development enables the development of large, complex research proposals (i.e., those in excess of $5M) or those of strategic importance to LSU through comprehensive proposal development support services. Services for smaller projects will be considered as time and available resources allow.
ORED staff are available to assist PIs throughout the proposal development process and can provide the following forms of assistance:
Administrative:
- Create and maintain a contact list of collaborators working on the proposal schedule and attend planning meetings, create and distribute agendas and action items as needed
- Draft a project timeline for the team with target dates for each phase of the proposal development process
- Ensure compliance with the requirements of the RFP and sponsor guidelines
- Create budgets and budget justifications and liaison with external collaborators to obtain budgets and institutional commitments and as well as with the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP)
- Draft letters of commitment/support as needed, collect bio-sketches, facilities and resources information, etc.
- Complete proposal forms and obtain institutional signatures and approvals
- Facilitate external and/or internal scientific reviews, as appropriate
Editorial:
- Provide basic style guidelines for the creation of all portions of the proposal, including citation methods
- Create a file naming and track changes system to help track versions of proposal documents
- Edit documents for flow, sentence structure, syntax, grammar, and style
- Ensure that cross references are accurate throughout the document
- Format and paginate document, create table of contents, check bibliography and notation for consistency and correctness
- Make available templates and sample formatting as requested for the creation of all proposal documents
- Review proposal to ensure it meets all preparation guidelines
- Assistance in creating effective graphics
Eligibility
Proposal development support is generally limited to high-impact and strategic proposals that could substantially increase the LSU research portfolio, enhance research infrastructure, and enable multidisciplinary teams to work on important societal problems.
Proposal assistance is also available on a smaller scale. If you need proposal support, simply ask and we will see what we can do with the resources available to us.
Guidelines
For all proposal service requests, a timeline of 6-9 months is recommended, as this will also allow time for additional internal/external review prior to submission. All requests will be evaluated by ORED senior leadership. Factors for consideration will include allotted time for proposal development/assistance, qualifications of the PI, the long-term benefits to the university, and distribution of ORED support across all focal areas.