The National Science Foundation (NSF) is conducting a pilot of a new portal in the FastLane system that allows startups and small businesses to pitch their project concepts and receive responses within three weeks, FedScoop reported Monday. Kelly Monterroso, a communications specialist at NSF, said the Project Pitch platform allows NSF to streamline the scientific research grant application process for startups and entrepreneurs.
“So we know that if we invite them to submit a proposal, because they’ve gone through the project pitch process, we know who they are, we can hold webinars just for them, we can just really help them through their registration, all the paperwork that they need to submit. So it’s a way that we can help them through our process,” said Monterroso.
NSF came up with the Project Pitch platform using Service Cloud Lightning Edition, a software-as-a-service offering from Salesforce.
“The lack of upfront cost is really important because this is a pilot. It’s still a pilot, honestly. We’re still changing things,” Ben Schrag, Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer program director at NSF, said of Project Pitch.
