The RAP Funding Agencies maintain full autonomy over their funding mechanisms and awardees. They represent the RAP Committee or RAP Consortium, and are responsible for selecting their own awardees.
The selection process initially starts within each agency, and it is based on the following criteria:
- Scientific scores
- Funds available
- Fit with Funders’ priorities
- Applicant’s potential to secure large funding in the near future
On a second and final step, known as the “horse-trading” meeting, all the faculty directors and program managers of the agencies that sponsor the funding cycle, convene in a final meeting.
This meeting captures the beauty and strength of the program allowing funders to literally trade awardees so that the overall funding can stretch further.
Almost every agency has some type of restriction. This meeting and the trading facilitates removal of such barriers, and allows the agencies to leverage the power of the consortium in maximizing their final funding. Agencies with eligibility restrictions greatly benefit from this model.
Once the awardees are selected, the RAP function ends, and the funding agencies begin their relationship with their awardees. The agencies notify the awardees, in the person of the faculty contact Principal Investigator (PI1) and post award analyst, and send them the official award letter.
All post award activities, including progress reporting, are managed by the funding agencies.
RAP sends out denials to the applicants who have not been selected for funding and makes the results of the review available to all applicants, funded and not-funded.