I think we ought to set up deadlines every 3 months or so where we review the applications that have been sent in up to that point (or maybe less frequently than that depending on how much money is available).

  There are a lot of applications.  One method that a lot of granting agencies use to review applications is to have a first 'triage' stage where the people looking at applications sort through which ones they think they don't even need to bother to discuss because they are sure they will not succeed. This can save a lot of work.  The two ways that are usually used to do this is that we either all vote on whether an application may or may not be in the top 25% (or some other percentage), and then only consider those applications that we have voted might be in the top 25% (which in reality may be more or less than 25% of the applications). Then we would all look at those applications carefully and rank them all to come up with out finalists, whom we would them contact for more info.  The other method of triage involves all of us making a decision for each application on whether it should or shouldn't be considered, then we consider only those applications where at least one person indicated they thought the application should be considered.  Once we pool those applications we then all read them carefully and rank them as in the first case. I think we should have a step like this or otherwise we will never be able to agree on the finalists.

  We also need to think about whether we allow applications that are received and not awarded to automatically roll into the next application pool.  I think this is a reasonable thing to do, maybe once, but after that if we let this happen automatically the application will probably be out of date.  We also need a way of communicating with the applicants in this case so they know whether they are still being considered, or would need to update their applications to continue to be considered.

  Heidi