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[pathogen]

I guess this is a research vent. Applied to Large Funding Agency. Received notice that we were funded. I was over the moon. My first big success, summer salary, a postdoc, grad students, we were going to do all kinds of great stuff. We got the notification that we were funded, we jumped through all the post award compliance hoops they asked us to to get the money released. Now, suddenly, they told us "oops, we don't have the money after all. Too bad." I can't believe this. I know lots of awards are contingent on funding, but we were told we were awarded! My team is so disappointed. Ugh. I'd better get cracking on the next grant- now I really need it.

[mozman]

My spouse was told by her NIH program officer that due to ARRA, her grant had been scheduled for funding.  The money was slow in coming; she'd email the PO every few weeks, who would say " don't worry, its coming".

Cue several months later.  PO says "Oops, I made a mistake. Not only is your grant not being funded, it was NEVER eligible for ARRA funding in the first place.  Sorry about that. My bad".

Spouse essentially lost her job over the ensuing fallout. Derailed her career for years. Now only slowly picking up the pieces.

Cemented my opinion that many people take jobs at NIH because they were morons who couldn't hack it as real scientists.

[pathogen]

Oh my goodness, Mozman! That is SO much worse. We were the same way- asking about the $$$, getting "it's coming, it's coming". I will move forward and write another grant, but I feel terrible about the opportunities it was supposed to create for several other people that will now not happen.

[astoryteller]

Pathogen, were you given a signed contract promising the money? If so, I suppose waving such a contract in their faces would incur only bad blood, but still, are they in violation of contract?

[larryc]

A friend who works for a rural education agency won a multi-million dollar, five-year grant. They actually received the first year of funding, hired people, got going. Then they get an eamil saying that the agency had decided the whole grant initiative had been a mistake and they were cancelling funding for years 2-5.

Last year the DoE put out calls for Teaching American History grant proposals. My wife and I spent 3 months working with teams of people all over the country to write a series of great proposals--thousands of hours of work if you count everyone up. Months after the deadline we get an email--"So sorry, not enough funding for new proposals after all, but good work everyone!"

People should lose their jobs over this s***.

[cranefly]

We're going through this in Canada as funding gets pulled as well.
The good news is,  someone thought your project was worth funding, so it's worth submitting somewhere else without much revising!
 

[lurkingfear]

Pathogen, were you given a signed contract promising the money? If so, I suppose waving such a contract in their faces would incur only bad blood, but still, are they in violation of contract?

In my experience, these agencies are very careful not to issue any award letters until the project has worked its way through the upper echelons at the agency, and is assured of being funded.

OP - this sucks. The upshot is one would think you'll have a great shot at funding next time around. If the program manager stays the same, one would think he/she would feel bad enough about the situation to move you to the top of the 'funded' list next year.

[msparticularity]

A friend who works for a rural education agency won a multi-million dollar, five-year grant. They actually received the first year of funding, hired people, got going. Then they get an eamil saying that the agency had decided the whole grant initiative had been a mistake and they were cancelling funding for years 2-5.

Last year the DoE put out calls for Teaching American History grant proposals. My wife and I spent 3 months working with teams of people all over the country to write a series of great proposals--thousands of hours of work if you count everyone up. Months after the deadline we get an email--"So sorry, not enough funding for new proposals after all, but good work everyone!"

People should lose their jobs over this s***.

Yup--and this one was truly a last-minute bailout, too. I review for TAH (or used to), and we were about a week away from the beginning of the review cycle when they pulled the plug on us. One problem is that TAH, like FIPSE, is a program where lot of the funding gets eaten up in advance by Congressional earmarks (pork). When funding gets cut, the pork remains, but the projects like Larryc's get shafted.

[pgher]

I was PI on a proposal a year or so ago that got selected for funding.  My first clue that things were not very well organized was a promise that it would be contracted within, I think, 60 days of submission--and this is the Department of Energy, so not a real speedy organization.  After we got selected, they said that their budget was cut, so please submit a new budget and SoW that's only 1/3 of the original.  Then they said they wouldn't be able to contract until 4-6 months later.  Then they said, well, there's cost sharing, so you can go ahead and spend your own money (at your own risk) until we can get the contracts in place, which should be "any day now."  (We chose not to.)  Then the program got cancelled.  What a mess.