While you may be familiar with applying to grants, you may not know as much about pursuing research and development (R&D) contract solicitations.
Read on to learn about the basics of R&D contracts including what they are, how they differ from grants, and how to decide if a solicitation is well-suited to your scientific strengths.
What Are Contracts?
Contracts are government requirements for a product or service with specific goals, deliverables, and deadlines, and work done under a contract requires programmatic oversight by NIAID staff. We use R&D contracts to address specific programmatic needs, such as clinical trials under networks, product development, statistical and data coordinating centers, and development of animal models and product testing. R&D contract solicitations do not produce grants or cooperative agreement awards.
There are two main categories of R&D contracts: requests for proposals (RFPs) that include clearly stated research goals and objectives, and broad agency announcements (BAAs) that solicit contracted research on priority topics. Since RFPs focus on a specific programmatic requirement, the government defines the Statement of Work (SOW). BAAs focus on research to increase scientific knowledge or understanding—the government defines a topic of programmatic interest and the contractor provides an SOW for how they propose to accomplish the research objective.
Contracts vs. Grants
Grants, on the other hand, allow you to explore your scientific area of expertise within broad terms of award. The table below compares and contrasts technical attributes of grants and R&D contracts.
| Grant | Contract |
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Whereas NIH staff can broadly assist you as you prepare a grant application, solicitations are subject to regulations governing who can communicate with offerors or potential offerors, so you should not contact anyone in our program divisions for advice before the award stage. Unlike a grant, a contract is a legally binding agreement to deliver a product or service at a certain time and for a certain cost. You are expected to provide a defined, tangible output, rather than pursue a biomedical research discovery.
Additionally, potential offerors should keep an eye out for amendments to solicitations as instructions can change through these amendments.
Where to Find a Contract Solicitation?
All contract solicitations are posted on the Contract Opportunities page of the federal government’s System for Award Management (SAM.gov) website, which serves as a federal-wide portal that supports contract opportunities for the federal government. The links below are SAM.gov search results for the keyword “NIAID” and the indicated criteria:
- Solicitations, Presolicitations, and Sources Sought
- Extramural R&D Solicitations, Presolicitations, and Sources Sought
- Extramural R&D Solicitations Only
You can also find active solicitations at electronic Contract Proposal Submission (eCPS). To filter the eCPS list for NIAID, select NIAID within the Institute field and then click “Search.”
If you find a solicitation relevant to your interests, consider the following factors to decide whether a solicitation is right for you:
- How closely does the opportunity map to your area of expertise?
- Do your capabilities match the requirements in the solicitation? Could you take on subcontractors or collaborators to fill any gaps?
- Are you comfortable with the increased NIAID oversight for contracts compared with grants?
- Do you feel confident that you can provide the deliverables required within the solicitation’s deadlines—and at a competitive price?
Concept Review
You may want to get a preview of potential future solicitations at Concepts—Potential Opportunities, which lists Council-reviewed and -approved biomedical and behavioral R&D concepts before the solicitation is released. However, an approved Council concept doesn’t guarantee that NIAID will issue an opportunity.
Resources and Contact Information
If you need more advice, contact your business office within your organization, which has probably handled contract-related questions before and may have special rules for you to follow. Or, if you have a question about a specific solicitation, contact the NIAID Office of Acquisitions contract specialist listed in the solicitation. Do not contact the contracting officer’s representative, program office, or other contacts you may have.
Refer to NIAID Contract Solicitations for more general instruction on our acquisitions processes.