Lately we’ve been asked about the potential for USG grant funding in the current environment which is seeing a seismic change in how biomedical science is viewed by the people that are now in charge of it.
A couple of points:
1. Our interests have mostly been with contracts versus grants even though we do a fair amount of work on the grant side. We like the evaluation process better with contracts where it’s more aligned with how companies would typically be evaluated in a business opportunity. Also, the amount of funding is usually greater given the amount of effort needed to submit a favorably reviewed proposal.
2. We aren’t keeping track of all of the Executive Orders. We are aware of the reorganization coming to NIH, we’ve watched the large number of terminations of key program personnel across HHS, and we’ve seen a significant reduction in the number of opportunities in life science funding in both contracts and grants.
3. There are biologic/drug categories that are clearly out of favor, the most obvious being vaccines but there are others that have been impacted as well.
In the last month, we’ve performed numerous searches across the DoD and HHS for grant opportunities related to particular types of small and large molecule drugs.
It’s bleak.
Even the grants that are still open are uncertain given the reorganization coming to NIH. The DoD has openings in select areas but we would expect the competition for this funding to be even stronger given the lack of alternatives.
The advice we’re giving to our Clients and Prospects:
1. Don’t put in the effort or spend the money on a grant submission unless there is a very good fit (at a minimum) with the objectives/top categories of the grants.
• Do your homework on the level of competition to the amount of funding available.
2. If grant funding was part of the financial plan, remove it until you:
3. Monitor the environment for improvements.
• The various USG grant sites make this fairly easy to do. There are also reasonably priced subscription services that will drop grant areas of interest into your in-box every day or 5.
4. Try to find a fit with a (similar) contract opportunity or non-traditional grant.
• We recognize the difference in use and product development stage of grants versus contracts. We also know that there are many agencies that have grant-like funding mechanisms that might be a reasonable substitute.
• For contract opportunities, set up searches in SAM. This is easy to do and provides a reasonable amount of visibility.
We are watching how this is unfolding and will be blogging updates through the next few months.
Mark Logomasini, MBA, PMP
Managing Partner
