Here are some common steps to creating a proposal.

1. Are you elligible to be a Principal Investiagor (PI)?  If not, work to find out who can serve as PI with you as Co-Investigator (assuming this is allowed by the sponsor).
2. Share the Funding Opportunity Announcement with your admin (Christine).  Awards have many “strings attached”, and everyone is expected to abide by the terms and conditions.
3. The common elements of a proposal. (Font matters).  (See the resources for developing a NASA ROSES proposal)
4. The budget.  Why does it cost over 2x to cover a postdoc?   Fringe and Overhead.

   
   Fringe Rates – the cost of employee benefits (health plan expenses, pension plan expenses and workman's compensation expenses, among others) TO THE UNIVERSITY. Personal costs for the share of these benefits by the employee are typically not part of the budget process.

   Overhead Rates A.K.A. Facilities & Administrative (F&A) Rates - Costs that are incurred for common or joint objectives and, therefore, cannot be identified readily and specifically with a particular sponsored project, an instructional activity, or any other institutional activity.

          This is an example of why a postdoc with a starting salary of $50K costs over $100K when creating a proposal:

   

5. Internal Review Process.  Official proposals that involve budgets and other administrative concerns are submitted directly by Harvard University.  The individual within OSP who is assigned to sign off and submit proposals for a department or research area is referred to as the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR).  There is the sponsor's system and also an internal Harvard system that requires the entering of the common elements of a proposal.  

Concurrent Submission Systems

Proposal Information is entered into the funding agency system by the PI or Christine

-- Fastlane or Research.gov (NSF)
-- NSPIRES (NASA)
-- STGMS (STScI)
-- ProposalCentral (Simons)

Proposal Information is also input in Harvard’s internal Grants Management Application Suite (GMAS). Through this system a series of approvals are obtained by the:

-- PI
-- HCO Buisness Office
-- Dean of FAS or designee
-- AOR who signs on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Proposals must be submitted with enough time for the HCO Business Unit to review

The department needs to submit (lock and route) the GMAS proposal to OSP five (5) business days (pdf) before they are due to the sponsor. Depending on your math, that's at least 7 business days before the proposal is due to the sponsor between HCO and OSP review.  Once reviewed, the Proposal Information is submitted through the funding agency system by the Authorized Organizational Representative (AOR) at the Office for Sponsored Programs.

A sample budget template is below: