Pointers for filling out a NASA grant?

[Trying to Help]

Once again, I'm turning to the experience of CD. We're going to submit an application for a NASA Sustaining Grant but I haven't gotten past the introductory page. I'm trying to find out from another mentor if we have a login from a previous year, and if we should use that.

Besides the information on the initial page, is there anything that I should know in advance? Our team is spread across two locations so there's a time lag if I need to get information from a second group of students.

Thanks again,

Trying to Help

[Rich Kressly]

Here's a whitepaper I published on last year's application. I'm sure there are some differences this year, so READ CAREFULLY, BUT this still should be helpful.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2167

Good luck,
Rich

[Trying to Help]

Thanks Rich!

I've printed copies, and forwarded a link to other members of our team. I did have smile though when I read that a team needed a Plan B. You see, we *are* Plan B.

I'll happily take any other advice, though I suspect that Rich's four pages is pretty comprehensive.

Trying to Help

[Chris Fultz]

Please note that in addition to your application we will need the following supplemental documentation by Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 23:59:59 EDT:

We must receive an email from your accredited educational sponsor (school or other educational entity) endorsing the team's desire to apply for funding, confirming the educational sponsor's commitment to the team, and agreeing to the conditions of sponsorship. This email must also meet the following requirements:

1. Be sent to ARC-FRC-Reqs@mail.nasa.gov
2. Originate from the official email account of the educational sponsor (Principal, Assistant Principal, or equivalent)
3. Include both the team number and name of school in the subject line of the email

If you have any questions about this requirement, please contact us at ARC-FRC-Grants@mail.nasa.gov.

This is a critical step and is due by next Tuesday. Without this, your application will not be reviewed.

Also, take a look at the application because there is some demographic data that you will need to get from the school(s). It might take some time to get that, so you should start quickly.

And, be sure you select the right grant that you are qualified for. A team a few years ago checked a box they were not eligible for and it removed them from consideration.

[EricH]

Dave Lavery posted a while back on this. One of the biggest things is to read the instructions and follow them to the letter.

The appropriate post can be found here and the thread is here. It's from a couple years ago, but still has useful tips.

[ChrisH]

Out here in the "real world" of contract technology development, we have these things known as CDRLs (Contract Deliverables and Requirements List) or something like that. It exists for every project and is a list of all the things our government customer expects to get out of the project.

We are graded on how well we meet requirements and this not only applies to the current contract, but influences future contracts as well. If we do not deliver something on the CDRL for this project, we will probably be penalized on the grade for our next proposal. That often makes the difference between getting the new program and not.

The NASA grants have requirements that must be met after the season ends. If you have previously recieved NASA money I strongly suggest you make sure that requirements from previous years are fulfilled. If that is not possible, then you should include something about how you will ensure that requirement will be met this time in the relevant section.

[Trying to Help]

Thank you everyone.

Two quick questions and then a longer one, if you don't mind. On the question which asks about team years - we went to our first regional last year, so that means we're starting our second year as a team, correct? So we'd answer 2 years for that question. As for starting year, we have to put down the starting year for the team that split off from, correct?

The longer question, to which I hope we'll receive an answer from NASA tomorrow is since we're a 4-H team, how do we answer all the school related questions? At the moment, we have members from 4 different schools from four different school districts. Questions like how we support state standards, we can answer. (Do they want state framework references? Or general curriculum support answers?) Questions about free and reduced lunch are a little harder.

Thank you again,

Trying to Help

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Trying to Help

The longer question, to which I hope we'll receive an answer from NASA tomorrow is since we're a 4-H team, how do we answer all the school related questions? At the moment, we have members from 4 different schools from four different school districts. Questions like how we support state standards, we can answer. (Do they want state framework references? Or general curriculum support answers?) Questions about free and reduced lunch are a little harder.

I don't have an authoritative answer, but having just completed the NASA grant application form too, I can at least tell you what we did! For any school-related questions, since we do not have a school, but a community organization, we answered all such questions as if it pertained solely to our school.

As a result, some of the answers to questions seem a bit odd (only 22 students in the "entire school"), with 0% receiving free/reduced lunch (we don't have such a program at our robotics meetings!) Questions relating to "teachers" we filled out as pertaining to our "coaches" (the primary every-meeting volunteers) with the "corporate/community mentors" referring to the "occasional" volunteers. I don't know if this was exactly the right thing to do, but I think the answers to the written questions clarify our answers to these other questions.

[wendymom]

We are treating our County 4-H office as our school with our agent being our "principal". We are using demographics for the entire county...(we have 10 different schools represented on our team) since anyone in the county is able to join the team. Who knows if it is right or wrong...good luck everyone!!!

[Trying to Help]

Thanks for the pointers and wishes of luck!

Ken - we used the number of team members as you did for the school numbers, and followed your example for the teachers and community mentors numbers. Based on knowing our team members, I estimated on the low-end for the free and reduced lunch percentage. I could be completely wrong however.

WendyMom - we also used our county office and extension educator as school and principal.

We'd been told via an email from NASA that we could leave the school, free/reduced lunch numbers, etc. blank. If you've submitted already, you know this isn't possible. So this afternoon had me adding in "Engineering" as the subject taught for our main contact and "Computer Science" for the alternate.

I confess that I feel just a little bit like I am in the company of giants knowing that both Mechanical Mayhem and Exploding Bacon are submitting for NASA grants.

Thank you again for all your help. Chief Delphi is a wonderful resource!

Trying to Help

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Trying to Help

We'd been told via an email from NASA that we could leave the school, free/reduced lunch numbers, etc. blank. If you've submitted already, you know this isn't possible. So this afternoon had me adding in "Engineering" as the subject taught for our main contact and "Computer Science" for the alternate.

I believe that this is actually not true. You should be able to resubmit your application with any changes at any point prior to midnight ET tonight and the system should overwrite your old submission with the new one.

[Trying to Help]

I did try submitting without the school specific numbers and it highlighted those fields in red. There was an error message which told me that I couldn't submit without filling out those fields. I ended up explaining the data in the free response question are which spoke about additional details for your team.

Trying to Help

[Ken Streeter]

Originally Posted by Trying to Help

Thanks for the pointers and wishes of luck!...

I confess that I feel just a little bit like I am in the company of giants knowing that both Mechanical Mayhem and Exploding Bacon are submitting for NASA grants.

Thank you again for all your help. Chief Delphi is a wonderful resource!

Trying to Help

Trying to Help -- congrats! Whatever you ended up writing for the NASA Grant application, you were successful -- I see your team on the list of Grant Award Winners for 2010!

--ken

[Trying to Help]

Originally Posted by Ken Streeter

Trying to Help -- congrats! Whatever you ended up writing for the NASA Grant application, you were successful -- I see your team on the list of Grant Award Winners for 2010!

--ken

Congrats on your grant also! I'm still stunned at the news that we received a grant from NASA. I know that there are so many great teams out there and so much financial need this year, that I'm still in shock from the news that we received a grant.

Congrats to all the teams that received a grant! And best wishes for other funding for those that will continue to the search.

Trying to Help