You, your PI and members of the research team should work together to come up with a proposal preparation and submission plan. Work backward from the deadline to develop a timeline. 

Think about the following

• What is the sponsor's submission deadline?
• What is the OSR/RMG deadline for institutional review?
• Who will be responsible for completing the different forms within the application?
• How will the application file be shared between different contributors (e.g. email attachment, placed on shared drive, copied to portable media)?
• When must the forms be completed in order to allow time for the actual submission?
• Is a subawardee involved? If so who will be responsible for receiving their proposal to Stanford and all the necessary information?
• Are there human, animal or biosafety protocols that need to be initiated?
• Prepare to submit. PIs also will need to make sure they are registered with eRA Commons for NIH, or FastLane for NSF.
• Do you need to obtain a waiver for F&A costs?
• How many years is the grant period?
• Does the PA (Program Announcement) place restrictions or limitations on personnel/fringe, equipment, F&A. Does it require any special calculations? 

Before a proposal is submitted, it must be reviewed by an IO in OSR (Office of Sponsored Research or RMG (Research Management Group) to ensure it is accurate, complete, and adheres to sponsor and institutional policy. 

The complete and final proposal is due to the  IO (Institutional Official at) least 5 business days before the sponsor's proposal deadline.  (review the memo). Consider how the proposal will be submitted: Grant.gov, FastLane, or other agency specific websites. is the receipt time PST or EST. In very rare cases, a proposal application is a hard copy document and must be sent by US mail or Fedex.

Each agency has a unique  way of conducting business. 

Review the Non- School of Medicine internal proposal deadline policy

Review the School of Medicine internal proposal deadline policy