DRS Round 8 Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) were forecasted to post by September 4, 2019. As of today, September 5th, the FOAs are not yet on grants.gov. This isn’t unusual, as there have been delays in past rounds of DRS. Sometimes the delay is a few days and sometimes it is a few weeks or more. Often, particularly when there are longer delays, the forecasts on grants.gov are updated so that grantees have a sense of when FOAs will be released.
A delay in the release of the DRS FOAs doesn’t mean that planning needs to stop. Rather, we recommend continuing your program design and budget planning discussions. Using the delay to nail down any program design changes and to tighten up your budget will help your program dive into the proposal narrative when the FOA is released.
Earlier this year, we published a blog post, How to Use the Wait for DRS to Enhance Proposal Competitiveness. One of the strategies discussed in the blog post is ensuring your agency has a strong community assessment to inform its DRS proposal narrative. While there is not likely time to conduct a full community assessment, you might consider using this time to update data or gather new data that will help to justify your program design.
We understand the uncertainty that comes with a delay in the release of the DRS Round 8 FOAs. If your program is in need of support during the waiting period please be in touch. We are able to offer streamlined services to update and enhance community assessment data and help ensure you have the tools you need to write a competitive DRS proposal.
Thank you.