Internal approval

Your institution will have an internal approval process for submitting proposals for research funding, it will almost certainly be a formal process. You should make yourself aware of your local policy before contacting any potential external funder.

Most processes have a multi-stage sign-off procedure, which could be as little as one person needing to approve a submission to over five. Examples of those that may need to ‘sign-off' include:

• you, the principal investigator (most institutions require a statement from you (implicit or explicit) that you have followed appropriate procedures, etc)
• head of school/department
• dean of faculty
• research office
• finance office
• deputy/pro-vice-chancellor.

If you require a large proportion of these you can see that the process may well take some time, there will be guidelines for how long the process might take, but basically you should start as soon as possible.

Often these sign-offs include specific undertakings, for example, a confirmation that the proposal has been internally peer reviewed (which is consistently reported as being the best way of improving chances of success).

As part of the process and as well as the costing and pricing and attaching the proposal itself (possibly in draft format) you may well need to include things such as a risk assessment, health and safety review, ethics review, intellectual property issues and so on.

You may also be interested in the submission page.