The Grants.gov team is pleased to announce that the backlog of applications waiting to be validated by Grants.gov has been cleared. We expect that validations will be able to keep up with submissions going forward.

Grants.gov has focused significant attention and resources over the last several weeks toward being able to successfully receive a record number of applications leading up to a major grant closing on April 27. Grants.gov successfully received 30,000 applications over an 8-day period from April 20 – 27, nearly as many applications as we received in all of March. In focusing on receipts, however, we realized that we would then be in a position where Grants.gov would be able to receive applications much faster than it could validate them. We felt it was less disruptive to have slower validations of applications than for applicants to have problems submitting applications in the first place.

As a result of the record number of applications received, the backlog of applications to be validated rapidly increased, especially for those submitted directly to Grants.gov rather than through system-to-system submissions. This past week, many applications have taken five days or more to clear validations and be ready for agency download and further evaluation. Our target service level is to validate applications within 48 hours of receipt.

Grants.gov implemented a system change on Friday, May 1, that has allowed us to clear the backlog of applications awaiting validation. Equally important, we expect this change to minimize future backlogs of application validations as we achieve a better balance between receipt and validation processing speeds.

We understand the inconvenience and concern that the slower-than-normal application validations have caused, whether to grantor review processes or to applicants who have been looking in vain for their validation messages. We appreciate your patience as we have worked literally night and day to meet the challenges of unprecedented processing volumes.

The Grants.gov team continues to implement its "boost" intiative and other changes to ensure stable operations at continued high volumes and to improve the user experience for both grantor agencies and grant applicants. We look forward to continued and improved dialogue with users to ensure that Grants.gov fulfills expectations as the Federal Government's primary resource for finding and applying for grant opportunities.