User Story: Where In the World Is My Federal Grant Application?

All grant applicant journeys must eventually come to an end – ideally, with news of an award.

You may remember, in our last installment, our fearless applicants Susan, April, and Leo submitted their federal grant applications. In this post, we close out their stories with one final article about what happened after their applications were submitted.

Tracking Your Application

Post-submission, Grants.gov serves a bit like a virtual post office.

After you click submit on your application, it is stored in Grants.gov until the grant-making agency retrieves it and begins its evaluation process.

At any point after submission, applicants can check the status of their application by using the Grants.gov Tracking Number listed on the confirmation screen or email.

And that’s exactly what Susan, April, and Leo do: They log into their accounts and click the Check Application Status link, which appears under the Grant Applications heading in the Applicant Center page. This will take them to the Check Application Status page.

Next, they enter their Grants.gov Tracking Number in the appropriate field and click the Search button.

On the next screen, the Status column will list the current status of their submission, which in this case is “Validated”.

What Does the Status Mean?

There are a range of status updates that users might see in Grants.gov. Here are some of the most common statuses, along with their definitions.

• Received: Grants.gov has received the application, but the application is awaiting validation.
• Validated: Grants.gov validated the application and it is available for the agency to download.
• Rejected with Errors: Grants.gov was unable to process your application because of an error(s) and cannot accept the application until you correct the error(s) and successfully resubmit the application. You will receive an email with a list of errors. You can also view the errors at any time via the Check Application Status page: Just click the Details link associated with the rejected application.
• Received by Agency: The agency has confirmed receipt of the application.
• Agency Tracking Number Assigned: The agency has assigned an internal tracking number to your application. This is the last status that Grants.gov tracks. Updates beyond this must be checked with the agency directly. Note: All agencies do not assign tracking numbers. If you do not see an agency tracking number, this does not infer that the agency did not receive or process your application. The assignment of tracking numbers is based on the policy of a particular agency.

For a complete list of statuses and their definitions – along with other information about tracking a submission, read this online help article. Once the federal grant-making agency receives the application, you will need to contact the agency point of contact for additional tracking and status information during the application review.

As for Susan, April, and Leo? We will leave the fate of their submissions to your imagination, but we can assure you that – regardless of the application outcomes – the three of them lived happily ever after.