Go Deep: Adding Subforms to a Grants.gov Workspace

If you’re lucky, your next federal grant application will be pretty straightforward. You will need to complete the SF-424, of course, and then a few additional forms. But – fingers crossed – hopefully you won’t be thrown any curve balls.

One such challenging pitch to hit might be the need to add subforms to a parent form within your workspace.

Adding and completing subforms in Grants.gov Workspace is different than it was in the Legacy PDF Application Package. No longer are subforms extracted from the parent form. In Workspace, subforms are added below the parent form within the Forms tab.

The following instructions walk you step-by-step through the process, in hopes that if you are thrown the ole’ subform curveball on your next application you will recognize it right away and be able to hit it out of the park:

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].

#ReplyAll: ‘Can Workspace Catch My Mistakes?’

The Reply All blog series addresses individual user questions that may be relevant to a wider audience.

Q: How smart is Workspace? Can it catch my mistakes?

A: Workspace is built to alert users to potential problems with their grant applications. If you miss a required field, for example, a message will list the overlooked field in a pop-up window when you click the application form’s Check for Errors button.

If you fill out the SF-424 form before working on other forms in the application package, Workspace will populate certain other fields on other forms within the package. This will both save you time and help you avoid making a typo when re-typing data on multiple forms.

However, there are certain mistakes that Workspace will not be able to catch or remedy.

How to Create a Workspace and Start Your Grant Application

Previous posts have highlighted the benefits of using the Grants.gov Workspace feature and provided example cases that illustrate those benefits in real-world situations.

If you’re ready to give Workspace a try, the only thing that remains is to create a workspace for the funding opportunity for which you want to apply.

This video walks you through the process.