Look for new opportunities
Once you have met the deadline with your best effort, the fate of your response is out of your hands. However, that does not mean that the fate of the project plan is out of your hands. Clients often ask if we think their proposal will win. That is impossible to answer. While we might be proud of the response and followed all the steps to ensure a complete, compliant, and compelling response, we can’t control other teams’ submissions or decisions of the funding agency. There might be a strategy dictating who receives awards of which people outside the funding agency are not aware. You simply have to do your best, and hope that it meets the criteria, but know that even the best you can do might not be what is needed to win. So that means you lost, right? Wrong. You were only turned down for funding from this opportunity, not rejected based on the merits of the project.
Debrief the response development effort
Identify the parts of the plan you want to execute independent of the requirements of the previous FOA
Conduct a go/no go review based on the project’s independent merit
Review other relevant funding streams
Decide whether to reapply for funding from other agencies or whether pursue the project on your own
Use your plan to run a great project
