Get a Review

OSP Budget Review – Mandatory

Every grant budget must be reviewed by OSP at least one week prior to submission.


Other Reviews

Reviews help to strengthen proposals by helping you to create competitive requests and ensuring that the effort you’re making can possibly result in a grant award. In addition to required reviews, you may opt to consider other opportunities to gain feedback on your ideas.

OSP Concept Review

OSP will review your concept and pro forma budget against the proposed opportunity to confirm that it is eligible and aligned to sponsor requirements, and that the program design and budget can be effectively implemented. Please provide this as early in the process as possible.

RFCUNY Concept Review

RFCUNY’s Office of Award Pre-Proposal Support will review your draft proposal or summary and provide feedback on your proposal concept and alignment to funding. Contact Ingrid Valentine at Ingrid_Valentin@rfcuny.org or call the office at (212) 417-8517 for an appointment. 

Sponsor Review

Sponsors may provide a pre-submission review of your concept or your draft proposal and provide actionable feedback that you can use to improve your proposal. Check with your sponsor program officer or ask OSP for details on the availability of these reviews.

RFCUNY Proposal Peer Review

RFCUNY’s Proposal Peer Review program helps to assess the quality of CUNY grant proposals. By identifying both weaknesses and strengths, as well as providing suggestions for improvement, a proposal’s competitiveness can be greatly enhanced before submission to an external funder. Proposals to all types of funders and sponsors can be evaluated, with a particular emphasis on the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and U.S. Department of Education. To be effective, peer review must be requested at least one month prior to the proposal due date. For further information and registration visit the RFCUNY website.

Serve as a Proposal Reviewer

Serving as a peer reviewer can be among the best professional development experiences for faculty interested in improving their proposal competitiveness. Federal agencies often issue calls for proposers; you can learn about these by visiting agency websites and by signing up for agency news alerts.

Locally, RFCUNY organizes CUNY faculty into expert panels to review proposals by other CUNY faculty. Peer reviewers are matched to submitted proposals based on scientific (knowledge relevance to the proposed project) and ethical (personal connection to the applicant) criteria. The program is completely confidential and serves both internal and external competitions. If no CUNY peer reviewers are qualified or available to critique a proposal, a qualified reviewer(s) external to CUNY will be sought to provide this feedback. The names of peer reviewers are not disclosed to applicants. For further information and registration visit the RFCUNY website.

Post-Award Review

Sponsors often — but not always — provide reviewer feedback on submitted awards that identify the strengths, weaknesses, and ways to improve your proposal copy. This is among the most actionable, and useful, feedback you can receive from sponsors. Be sure to review reviewer feedback for grants you lost, and grants you won.