Get Ready: Online Forms Coming to Federal Grant Applications on Grants.gov

Posted on by Grants.gov

The year 2017 is still months away, but now is the time to prepare for several significant enhancements that will be coming to Grants.gov.

In early 2017, you will have the option of completing federal grant application forms in an online environment that saves progress and auto-fills matching fields on other application forms.

These online forms will provide an alternative to downloading Adobe PDF forms and completing them offline.

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You can prepare now for this exciting new feature by applying for your next federal grant using Workspace.

Why? Online forms will be accessible only within Workspace, so learning the ins and outs of Workspace will ease your transition to online forms.

Workspace and online forms represent the future of Grants.gov. The traditional method of applying by downloading a package of PDF forms, called the Legacy Package, will be phased out in December 2017.

What are the Benefits of Workspace?

Workspace and the introduction of online forms bring a range of benefits to applicants and their organizations:

  1. Workspace streamlines collaboration. Multiple forms can be completed at once by a team of applicants.
  2. Workspace saves time. Forms from old workspaces can be reused, reducing data-entry and increasing efficiency.
  3. Workspace helps applicants detect errors sooner. Improved error-checking features allow applicants to catch and correct errors earlier, resulting in fewer rejected submissions.
  4. Workspace simplifies applying. In Grants.gov Workspace, links and buttons are explained in context-sensitive help articles. Grants.gov has also created a series of video tutorials to walk applicants through the Workspace submission process.

For more information about Workspace, check out the Workspace Overview page.

Questions about Workspace or online forms? Please feel free to share them in the comment section below. Read our Comment Policy and Privacy Notice.

5 thoughts on “Get Ready: Online Forms Coming to Federal Grant Applications on Grants.gov”

  1. Why are some grant applications Workspace compatible and some aren’t? We just applied for the Promise Neighborhood grant through the Dept. of ED and given the number of collaborators could have used the efficiencies of Workspace. The application was listed as ‘non compatible’ with Workspace.

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    1. Hi Michaela, thanks for the question. To use Workspace, the grant-making agency (in this case, Department of Education) must create the funding opportunity using forms that are compatible with Workspace. If they used any incompatible forms, then no applicants will be able to create a workspace. I apologize that the opportunity you are applying for is not one of these; as of Friday (9/16), 99% of all the opportunities on Grants.gov were compatible with Workspace.

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  3. Hi, Currently when applicant fills PDF forms, the grantor agency receives a zip file that contains the PDF forms (in read-only format) and attachments. If applicant starts using online wokspace, will grantor agency continue to receive PDF forms in the application zip file?

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    1. Hi Ravi, nothing changes on the grantor agency side. The grantor will receive the application as they always have, no matter if it was completed in Workspace or if it was submitted via the legacy (old) method.

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