[araes]

Having tried to write a large grant recently, can slightly comment. I attempted to work with a university, because like most grants, never available without an academic tie-in. In a pithy way, the only individual grants are mostly NEA/NEH grants about writing books about writing books (also applied for those).

The university I worked with had a 40+% overhead rate auto-included. This could not be negotiated. If you want to work with us, we add this amount to our Govt. request.

The university added a lot of extra work because of this. I basically brought them a proposal, I literally walked over to their partnership office and said "I've written a proposal I'd like to work with you on." It was mostly written, and said I think "some number" would be reasonable. They said, we don't apply without 40+% overhead, rewrite the whole grant so it works with our overhead and faculty tie-in requirements. I said that seems very large, and then none of the other numbers work. They said, write with 40+%.

The eventual result was that the university wanted me to work as a sub-contractor being paid less than a different contractor they were going to hire as a specialist, so I could have the pleasure of partnering with them.

Also, it needs to be completed a month before the deadline, because then all our internals need to churn over the money numbers (and predictably came back a check mark). I was glad it lost.