hell Is Not Other People: Hell is Federal Grants
Apologies for not blogging as much recently. I’m back in the world of federal grants. The last time i wrote about this, the adventure featured a number of acronyms, culminating in a visit to the ORC, after which the password the feds provided me to submit my grant didn’t actually work.
This grant has been a little more straightforward, but in the typical federal government style i’ve grown used to, there’s always something totally fucked up. And in this case, the fucked up begins with the application itself.
One thing you have to understand about the feds is that they have the Sadim Touch: that’s the opposite of the Midas Touch, in which everything you do turns to shit. In the past this has included forcing grantees to apply using an application no one else uses called the Pure Edge viewer, the pdf equivalent of Betamax. This year, the application is adobe-based, and in a rare bit of foresight, the feds realized their usual inefficient and not-quite-up-to-par grant site, grants.gov, would be overwhelmed due to response to the president’s stimulus. They allow you to submit via email.
The application is a VERY dense pdf with upload capabilities, allowing grant applicants to upload all their supporting documents like budgets and job descriptions to one big document and then mailing the whole package in one file. In theory that is.
“In theory” because the upload capability doesn’t always work. In fact, it shuts itself off and on quite randomly. So I was able to upload the project abstract (a word document), but not the project narrative (also a word document). In an hour I may be able to upload the narrative, but who knows.
When this began happening yesterday, I scrolled through the RFP to find the contact name, and dialed Dave, the Grant Officer. a woman answered the phone cheerfully saying “I’m not dave, this is the wrong number!”
“Oh!” I said, surprised. “Guess you’ve been getting a lot of calls related to the–”
“–the citizenship grant, yup, every 5 minutes. The number is one digit off.” She gave me the propoer number, which I dialed. Dave’s voicemail kicked in and explained that he wasn’t available, and if I had a citizenship grant question, I should call a third number, where i would have to leave a voicemail so he could call me back. But when I called that number, no one picked up the phone after a good dozen rings. So I called Dave back and left a message, explaining the problem with the application. He called back, and just like your car stops making that horrible grinding noise when the mechanic looks at it, the application began uploading again. The minute Dave hung up, it stopped working agaibn. great.
This morning, I was able to upload one document before the application had decided it had enough. the deadline is in two hours, and the only reason I’m blogging right now is that I’m waiting on one or two documents that need to be completed. Time is running out…
