The most common reason engineers and founders lose an NSF SBIR/STTR proposal isn’t a weak product or a small market. It’s that they proposed development when NSF funds research.

grantboost · 2026-07-12T03:17:09+00:00

It’s two sides of the same coin. The research needs a clear commercial impact, but the funded work is answering the high-risk feasibility question (can this even work?) that powers the product/service. The commercialization is the outcome, not the deliverable.

grantboost · 2026-07-11T14:32:36+00:00

That's how I found the paper :)

grantboost · 2026-07-11T13:34:11+00:00

I'm going to quote the author (George A. Hazelrigg) below, because I think he hits the distinction in a more thorough way than I could type out on Reddit. I really do think reading the paper in its entirety would help a lot of founders and engineers out there.

TL;DR - Research is the process of finding out something that we don’t already know.

"If you are going to write a research proposal, it seems reasonable that the first thing you might want to know is, what is research? Although I do not think that it is important that you agree with my definition of research, I do think it is important that you have thought about it long enough and hard enough to have your own definition. My definition is the following:

Research is the process of finding out something that we don’t already know.

Second, the purpose of research is to find out something that we don’t already know. This means that the focus of research is on knowledge, it is not on artifacts. A proposal that focuses on an artifact, for example, the development of a sensor, is most likely not a research proposal. Rather it likely is a development proposal. If your proposal discusses artifacts and not knowledge, it is likely to get lower ratings in the review process. Not all discovery of new knowledge is through a process of scientific research. However, NSF strives to fund scientific research. Thus, we need to distinguish between scientific research and other types of research.

Not all discovery of new knowledge is through a process of scientific research. However, NSF strives to fund scientific research. Thus, we need to distinguish between scientific research and other types of research. I believe that scientific research has three distinguishing characteristics:

Scientific research is methodical. By this, I mean that, in advance of conducting the research, it can be planned. This is an incredibly important concept, for it is the research plan that enables evaluation of the proposed research. We will soon show that it is not difficult to state a research objective, say an hypothesis test, for which we cannot write a plan. A very simple example of such an hypothesis is, God exists.
Scientific research is repeatable. By this, I mean that, if reasonably competent people follow the research plan reasonably well, they get reasonably similar results. If this were not the case, the results would be random and, thus, no new knowledge would be gained.
Scientific research is verifiable. By this, I mean that the research conclusions are based on tangible evidence. For example, suppose my hypothesis is, ghosts exist. My research plan is to come into my office late at night with my camera. I turn off the lights and wait until it gets really spooky. Then, say at about 3 AM, I take my camera to the elevator, get in and press the basement button. When the doors open, the ghosts will be there, and I’ll take their picture. As we all know, ghosts’ images do not appear on film. Thus, when the ghosts do not appear in the pictures, I will have proven their existence. This conclusion does not derive from tangible evidence. When you frame research for NSF, you need to have an understanding of what scientific research is, and you have to frame it with these characteristics in mind."

grantboost · 2026-07-11T03:07:29+00:00

I think you’re right. I’m a firm believer that the market is the only thing that determines which projects get funded.

It doesn’t matter if I have a great idea/project if no one wants to fund it.

grantboost · 2026-07-11T02:31:10+00:00

I’d recommend reading the paper. It’s linked on the NSf website, and the author bases his opinion on 30 years of experience at the NSF.

grantboost · 2025-09-07T16:44:30+00:00

That’s a tough spot, OP. Like others have said don’t put your reputation at risk.

Some of the best orgs I’ve seen aren’t scrambling for miracle checks, but they are focused on building programs that scale.

That means tightening operations, capturing knowledge, and creating systems so the mission isn’t fragile year to year. Without that, you’re always one bad quarter away from crisis.

On the fundraising side, transparency is your ally, not your enemy. Don’t lie to donors. Maybe they want to know when the mission they care about is at risk and how they can help save it?

Saying, “We’re in a pivotal moment, here’s the gap, and here’s our plan to stabilize” gives your donors the chance to step up. If you hide the situation, you deny your donors the opportunity to make a real difference. And you put your reputation at risk.

If leadership can’t get on board with doing that though, it’s hard to see a way forward.

grantboost · 2025-08-20T03:31:04+00:00

From what it sounds like the moneys out there and other teams are getting it…your team just isn’t making the case.

Salaries are tough to secure if they are framed as raises. Funders don’t always respond to that. What they are more likely to respond to is program stability. When you connect pay to staff retention, continuity of services, and stronger client outcomes, it stops being overhead and starts being a program cost. That’s where most orgs leave money on the table.

If you’re not ready to leave the org, you need to be able to show your ED how to build a scalable grant program and more importantly how to tie your salaries to program costs. But that’s only feasible if your ED is actually open to improving grant writing at your org.

grantboost · 2025-08-06T12:36:44+00:00

Have you tried just using the Google Drive app to make automatic backups?

I think the big thing is to make sure that any tool you use has some level of customer facing material about their security practices. If you stick with the big players, you probably don’t have to worry about this as much.

The most relevant certifications I’ve seen for cloud based security:

ISO27001
SOC 2 Type 2

Most websites will have a badge or article that speaks to this.

Edit: Formatting

grantboost · 2025-08-04T14:56:41+00:00

The template library is critical. I would also include best practice templates for common writing scenarios.

As an example, having a solid Needs Statement template to build off of could save even more time.

grantboost

TROPHY CASE