Grants.gov Workspace: Fast, Easy to Use, and Secure

UPDATES: Click here for the latest Workspace blog posts or training videos.

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New Applicant Feature: How to Add Outside Users to a Workspace

Applicant teams sometimes bring on outside contributors and consultants to assist with their federal grant application. Until recently, these outside users needed to create a Grants.gov account for every applicant organization they assist – meaning that some users had to juggle dozens of separate accounts.

However, in June, Grants.gov eliminated this burden. Now, a single user account can be associated with workspaces across multiple organizations.

Watch this video to learn more about the arrival of this much-requested feature:

New Applicant Feature: How to Limit Access to Budget Forms

Grants.gov listens to user feedback and tries – whenever possible – to add requested features.

One of Grants.gov’s newest features gives the Workspace Owner, AORs with MPIN access, and the E-Business Point of Contact the ability to limit access to budget forms. These forms often contain confidential information, such as salary data.

With Release 16.0, controls have been added to permit specific users to view and edit the budget form data.

How Do I Download, Complete & Upload a Workspace Form? #ReplyAll

The Grants.gov Support Center helps a lot of you resolve problems and complete your federal grant applications before the deadline. One of the most common questions the Support Center gets is how to use Workspace forms.

Below are general steps to answer that question. “General” because the steps below depend on whether you are filling out a webform or a PDF version of the form—you get to choose. Since this is the most common Workspace-related question to the Support Center, we know many of you have no problem creating a workspace since the forms are only accessible through that.

How to Find Your Congressional District for the SF-424 Form

The “Congressional District of Applicant” field is just one tiny rectangle on the SF-424 form, but if you get it wrong, it can create complications for your application downstream.

In this field, the grant-making agency expects a code that begins with your state’s two-letter abbreviation and ends with a three-digit district number. A hyphen separates the two parts, like this, “VA-001” [State of Virginia – 1^st Congressional District].

Grants.gov Release 16.0 Is Live! Here’s What You Need to Know

The latest updates to the Grants.gov system bring significant improvements to Workspace to better accommodate our diverse group of applicants. Below are the essentials for this release and links to more detailed information.

Grant Writing Basics: 3 Tips to Avoid Last Minute Problems

Applying for a federal grant can be a lot of work involving many moving parts. On top of strategizing, conducting meetings, and writing a compelling proposal, there are other little-but-necessary tasks on the path to successfully submitting your application that you should do well before the closing date.

Here are 3 tips to avoid some of those last minute problems:

#ReplyAll: Using Video Tutorials to Learn How to Apply with Workspace

You may have seen the video below about the benefits of Workspace. One user who watched the video wrote to us recently and requested videos that explain how to use Workspace. The good news is they already exist!

We have created two video series that can assist applicants applying for federal grants using Workspace.

Release 16.0 Preview: Introducing the Progress Bar

Since launching Workspace in 2015, Grants.gov has continued to enhance its collaborative features for applicants. Several new features will be available when Release 16.0 is deployed on June 19, 2017.

Our first Release 16.0 preview post highlighted changes to user roles and access levels that will allow Workspace Owners to control access to budget forms and to add participants from outside organizations.

Another upcoming enhancement is the addition of the new progress bar at the top of the workspace.

How the Government Prepares Grant Application Forms – Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we explained the content development process for new and updated Grants.gov forms. In Part 2, we focus on Grants.gov’s role in the technical development of forms.

The development time of each form can range from one month for a cosmetic change to up to six months for a new, multi-page form. The following provides a high-level overview of the forms development cycle: