What you get
- A one-page project summary with Overview, Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts under their own headings.
- A project description that addresses both merit review criteria plus any solicitation-specific criteria.
- Broader Impacts activities with named partners, a budget line, a responsible person and a way to measure them.
- The data management and sharing plan, mentoring plan where required, and budget justification.
- A compliance check against the current PAPPG and the solicitation before your institution submits.
NSF grant writing services prepare National Science Foundation proposals for researchers and institutions: the project summary, the project description, Broader Impacts, the required plans and the budget justification, written from your research and checked against the current Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and the solicitation. The ideas are yours; we do the writing, the structure and the compliance work that keeps a proposal from being returned without review.
How NSF differs from NIH
Investigators who have written for NIH often carry habits that cost them at NSF.
- No Specific Aims page. NSF has a one-page project summary with three required headings, Overview, Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, and a project description that is usually 15 pages.
- Two criteria for every proposal. Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts are both assessed, and the project description must contain a separate section labeled Broader Impacts.
- Program officers matter early. Many NSF programs welcome a short summary sent to the cognizant program officer before you write, which can tell you whether your project fits the program at all.
- Solicitations add their own criteria. Programs such as CAREER, Major Research Instrumentation or the STEM Education programs layer extra requirements and review criteria on top of the standard two.
Broader Impacts, done properly
Most weak Broader Impacts sections fail in the same three ways. They are generic ("we will publish and present at conferences" describes every research project). They are appended: written last, unconnected to the research, with no budget line and no partner. And they cannot be assessed, because nothing says how anyone will know whether they worked.
We build them the other way round. Specific activities with a named partner (a particular school district, museum, community college or industry group), a budget line and a person responsible, and an evaluation approach as concrete as the research plan. Where an activity targets students or a community, it is open to everyone eligible, consistent with NSF's current priorities. Securing a real partner letter takes weeks, which is the main reason NSF proposals should start early. For K-12 partnerships, our overview of STEM grants for K-12 shows what schools themselves are funded to do, and a logic model for broader impacts work is often the clearest way to connect activities to outcomes.
The PAPPG is enforced by return without review
A proposal that breaks the PAPPG or the solicitation's rules can be returned without being reviewed. The recurring causes:
- a project description over the page limit, or a Broader Impacts section missing from it;
- a project summary without the three required headings;
- a missing data management and sharing plan, or a missing mentoring plan when postdoctoral researchers or graduate students are budgeted;
- senior or key personnel documents not prepared in the required formats;
- formatting outside the PAPPG's font, margin and spacing rules.
NSF updates the PAPPG and issues supplements; the January 2026 supplement, for example, tightened public access and data sharing expectations. We check against the version that applies to your deadline.
What we write
Project summary. Written last, read first, under the three required headings.
Project description. Drafted from your notes, papers and preliminary results, with Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts each addressed where a reviewer expects them, results from prior NSF support where required, and any solicitation-specific sections.
Required plans. Data management and sharing, mentoring, and any program-specific plans.
Budget justification. Personnel effort, budget line items reviewers can follow, participant support costs kept separate as NSF requires, and indirect costs at your negotiated rate.
Biographical sketches and support documents. Prepared in the required format for each senior or key person.
What you provide, and timing
Send the solicitation number, a summary of the project, recent papers and preliminary results, and the names of any partners you already have. Start ten to twelve weeks before the deadline; Broader Impacts partners and institutional sign-off drive that timeline more than the writing does. Those ten to twelve weeks run from the start of a paid engagement.
No one can promise an award; funding depends on the panel, the program budget and the competition that cycle. For an overview of NSF programs, see our guide to NSF grants. Small companies applying to NSF's seed fund should start with SBIR and STTR application writing, because that program begins with a Project Pitch rather than a full proposal. For NIH applications, see NIH grant writing.
