Extended Grants.gov Downtime Impacts September 22-30 Due Dates

Grants.gov will migrate their services to the cloud during an extended downtime from Friday, September 23, 2022 at 12:01 AM ET through Thursday, September 29, 2022 at 11:59 PM ET. We successfully migrated our own eRA systems to the cloud in April 2020 and understand the planning, coordination, and time required for the effort. The downtime, though necessary, will have significant impact on the preparation and submission of grant applications to NIH.

To mitigate the impact, NIH due dates that fall on or between Thursday, September 22 and Friday, September 30, 2022 will move to October 3, 2022, with the following caveats and considerations:

• The end of the application receipt period for applications submitted under the Continuous Submission policy for the September 7, 2022 AIDS due date remains Saturday, October 1, 2022 but automatically moves forward to Monday, October 3 since it falls on a weekend.
• The two-week window of consideration associated with the NIH Late Application Policy (when applicable) will be calculated from the original due dates.
• The two-day application viewing window in eRA Commons will continue to function as normal for applications successfully submitted through Grants.gov.
  • If a corrective submission is needed within the application viewing window and while Grants.gov is unavailable, reject your application in eRA Commons to prevent it from moving forward to NIH for processing and submit your changed/corrected application prior to the October 3 due date.
  • If the application viewing window has passed, you can officially Withdraw Your Application and submit a changed/corrected application prior to the October 3 due date.
• NOT-OD-22-190 serves as notification of the due date change for impacted funding opportunities (i.e., edits to due dates within the text of individual opportunities will NOT be made).
  • NIH FOAs are posted with a grace period which allows applications to be submitted through Grants.gov systems even if the submission deadline shifts beyond the expiration date of the FOA.
  • If you experience any issues with your submission following Grants.gov’s return to service, please contact the eRA Service Desk for assistance.
• If you experience an impact not covered in NOT-OD-22-190, our standard Dealing with System Issues policy applies.

Additional steps you can take to minimize impact:

• Check with your Office of Sponsored Research to understand any shifts in internal deadlines and processes.
• Use the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts to search for and access opportunities, while Grants.gov Search is unavailable.
• Continue preparing your application.
  • ASSIST and some system-to-system solutions allow application initiation and preparation even when Grants.gov is offline.
  • If you typically use Grants.gov Workspace to prepare and submit applications to NIH, work on your application attachments and pull together all needed materials so you are ready to input your information as soon as Grants.gov returns to service.
    • The Application Form Instructions on the How To Apply – Application Guide page and our Annotated Form Sets include images of each form that can be used for reference.

Dealing with extended outages is never easy, but with flexibility and planning they’re certainly manageable.