The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) both have a general format for individual research grant applications. Additionally, many NIH and NSF proposals have "standard" sections – those elements of a proposal required by almost every Request for Applications (RFA) or Program Announcement (PA), regardless of the size of the project. The Office of Proposal Development has developed tools to help you organize your writing and to make writing standard sections more efficient while tailoring them to your particular goals or aims.
Outlines
Our office has developed outlines (available below) for NIH R01 and NSF research proposals. These outlines provide a guide to the standard sections required for these proposals and also offer project management checklists to facilitate delegation of tasks within a grant application, and setting internal deadlines for completion. Our office can expand these outlines and checklists with details from a specific RFA or PA upon request.
For larger grant mechanisms, such as U01, P01, P50 and other multi-investigator grants, we can offer to work with you to create an outline that is responsive to specific agency guidelines for the given mechanism. Please contact us at (617) 636-2480 or email proposaldevelopment@tufts.edu as soon as possible in advance of any internal or agency deadline if you are interested in such assistance.
The following outlines are in MS Word format:
Templates
Templates for biographical sketches, NSF budget justifications, and NIH resources and major equipment pages are found below. Each template uses examples and detailed instructions for proper completion of the form. Many of the templates also offer a blank template for completion by the investigator. Our NIH templates are modeled on the SF424 forms for electronic submission, and do not use the form pages required for PHS 398 paper submission. If your application uses the PHS 398 forms, please use the templates provided by the NIH.
If you have any questions about these templates or how to use them, please contact our office at (617) 636-2480 or email proposaldevelopment@tufts.edu.
The following templates are in MS Word format:
- NSF Biosketch
- NSF Budget Justification
- NSF Resources
- NIH SF424 Biographical Sketch (effective until January 25, 2010)
- NIH SF424 Biographical Sketch Blank Template (effective on and after January 25, 2010)
- NIH SF424 Major Equipment
- NIH SF424 Personnel Justification
- NIH SF424 Resources