After submitting an NSERC Discovery application in November, applicants can query their University research office for verbal notification of outcomes in mid-to-late March. The official letters generally come out in April and the NSERC “Message to Applicants” is released in May. When I worked at the University of Saskatchewan Research Office, applicants often asked how to interpret their results of reduced funding, short-term funding, or no funding.

While everyone hopes for 100% success, limited budgets make fulfilling that wish impossible for granting agencies. Instead, they provide opportunities for researchers to prove themselves and move their research program forward over the short term with limited funds. Not receiving 5 years of funding is actually of benefit to new researchers because it allows them to go back into the pool of applicants and request additional funds, rather than locking them into smaller amounts of funding over the long term.

Learning a grant application has not been funded is disappointing, and waiting almost two months to learn the reasons why it was not successful is incredibly frustrating. Applicants should remember that an unsuccessful application does not diminish long-term personal success. Reviewing the ‘Message to Applicant’ letter in May to obtain some guidance on where the GSC noted gaps in the application provides insight relevant to the preparation of a new application. In the interim, applicants can also contact their GSC’s Program Officer for possible feedback. Email is an ineffective tool for requesting this feedback as most representatives will not commit responses to paper, but may be more forthcoming in a telephone or in-person discussion. Cultivating a positive relationship with your GSC’s Program Officer can often be of benefit to researchers.