Grantwriting help series: How to handle grant proposal RFP amendments

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?We’ve written many times about contradictory and occasionally incoherent RFPs. To add to the grant writer’s burden, government funders often issue amendments—sometimes right before the deadline. The feds are less prone to issue amendments than local funders; as one moves down the food chain to state and county / city funders, the potential for amendments increases greatly. I’ve got no idea why this is, but it is.

We’ve seen a bunch of important RFP amendments in projects we’ve worked on lately, and those got me thinking about the issue. Here are some handy tips for handling RFP amendments:

• If possible, sign up to receive email notifications. This is fairly easy in the federal system but highly variable at the state and local levels.
• Remember your last visit to the DMV or DMV website? Government notification systems are not the same as you’ll find at Amazon, FedEx, or even Fandango. Since the system may be unreliable, you should go back to the funder web site several times before the deadline to check for amendments, even if you’ve signed up for notifications.
• When you find an amendment, review it carefully, as the notice, if there is one, may not be complete or even accurate. Among items to look for are a deadline extension, clarification of confusing or contradictory RFP language, changes in the required proposal format (e.g., max page/character lengths, order of responses, fonts, etc.), additional requirements (e.g., new forms or budget instructions, new letters of commitment, changed required attachments, etc.). The best way to do this, assuming you have at least two large monitors, like our offices, is to put the RFP on one monitor and the amendment on the second. Go through the amendment, finding each relevant section of the RFP, and mark-up the RFP. Then, make sure your draft—no matter what stage it is in—matches both the RFP and amendment. If you find yet another conflict, you must immediately email the funder program office, which will trigger yet another amendment.
• While looking for amendments, also look for a Q and A page on the funder website. Some funders will post questions received about the RFP, along with answers. Don’t however, get your hopes up, as the answers usually are something along the lines of, “Interesting question, refer to page 147 of the RFP.”
• While we advise our clients to submit proposals a couple of days in advance of the deadline, there is no advantage in submitting a proposal more than about three days in advance. Otherwise, you might have try to “un-submit” the proposal if there is a late breaking amendment. Also, being first in line doesn’t help, as funders never release proposals to reviewers until the deadline passes.

A few months ago, we were writing a proposal for a for-profit client in a Northeaster state, which was seeking a Department of Homeland Security contract for facility hardening. There were ultimately seven amendments, each of which significantly changed the proposal response, and a couple of which came after the original deadline, meaning that we actually prepared three “final” proposals for this assignment. The punch line is that, ultimately, DHS cancelled the RFP process and decided not to make any grants!

In grant writing, it pays to heed the advice of “Oscar” in Robert Heinlein’s 1963 science fiction classic, Glory Road, which I’ll paraphrase as, “all bureaucracies consist of a Surprise Department, a Practical Joke Department, and a Fairy Godmother Department.” In grant writing, the Fairy Godmother Department is only open one day per year, so mostly you’re at the mercy of the Surprise and Practical Joke Departments.