The researcher also is responsible for any special mailing arrangements, such as overnight delivery, needed to meet an agency receipt deadline. Originals provided to ORDA for photocopying should be good-quality and clearly readable. The researcher is responsible for copying materials other than those explicitly required by the funding agency, such as reprints and extensive appendices of supplementary information. You may wish to check your proposal for accuracy before it is mailed. ORDA's project specialists do not see a proposal again after it is submitted to ORDA's central office for final processing.
Mistakes can happen, especially when proposals are brought in with minimal lead time.
A letter of transmittal usually is written by the ORDA director to present the formal application to the agency. Although electronic research administration handling everything from proposal submission to award administration electronically is in its infancy, it is the wave of the future. Of the federal agencies moving in this direction, the National Science Foundation has been the leader. Its FastLane system is designed to handle the entire grants process, including all proposal submissions to NSF, electronically. See FastLane Basics and NSF's FastLane web site for details.