The most prevalent causes for proposal rejection are a surprisingly limited group of straightforward and well-known failures: The submission deadline was missed. The topic of the proposal was inappropriate for the funding agency to whom it was submitted. The guidelines for proposal content, structure, and/or duration were not strictly followed. The proposed project did not meet the criteria for funding. Other reasons for proposal rejection include administrative error, competitive review process failure, and budget constraints. Administrative errors include failing to send the proposal to the correct address or keeping it in a backlog of unsolicited proposals. Competitive review processes fail when a grantmaker rejects all of the proposals that are submitted in response to an open call for proposals. This can happen if the review panel members do not give each proposal a fair evaluation or if there is any other form of bias in the process. Budget constraints may lead to the rejection of proposals that would otherwise be funded if costs could be reduced elsewhere within the organization or if additional funding could be found somewhere else within the institution or organization. For example, a research foundation may have funds available for new initiatives but not enough to support them all. In this case, they might decide to only fund the most promising ones. Rejection can also occur because of differences in opinion between the reviewer(s) and the proposer. For example, one reviewer might believe that funding a particular project would be a bad use of resources while another believes it would be a great opportunity for learning experiences.