NSF Project Summary template
The NSF Project Summary is a one-page description of a proposal in three required parts: Overview, Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts. NSF asks that it be written in the third person for a technically literate reader outside your field. A summary that does not address both Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts separately can be returned without review. Fill in the three parts below.
In Research.gov the summary goes into three text boxes with a combined limit of 4,600 characters, which is roughly one page. Reviewers and program officers read it to place the proposal before they open the Project Description. A program officer sorting dozens of new proposals into review panels may lean on the Overview alone to decide which experts should read your work. If the work is funded, the public award abstract that NSF posts later usually draws heavily on it.
Free to copy and adapt. Square brackets mark what you replace. Nothing here is tied to a particular funder. Read each funder's guidelines for required headings, page limits and attachments before you paste a finished draft into their application form.
The template
Overview
What the project will do and how, in plain terms. Name the questions or goals, the approach and who carries it out.
This project will [what it does] to [goal]. The team at [institution] will [approach]. The work addresses [question or problem] in [field].
Intellectual Merit
How the project advances knowledge. Say what is new and why the team is positioned to do it.
The intellectual merit of this project lies in [the advance]. It will [test, build or measure what] using [method]. Its findings will [change what is known about what]. The team brings [relevant expertise or prior results].
Broader Impacts
The benefit to society beyond the research itself. Name concrete activities and who they reach. Reviewers give more weight to a specific partnership with a named school or community group than to a general promise of outreach.
The broader impacts of this project include [activity] for [who], [second activity] and [third]. [Number] students will be trained in [skills]. Results will be shared through [channels].
Skip the blank page
Quillify drafts the three parts of a Project Summary from your papers and project notes and keeps each part inside its section. It also drafts broader impacts, data management and facilities, the sections that take a week and add nothing to whether the science is good. Before you submit, Quillify scores the draft against the solicitation.
Questions people ask
How long is the NSF Project Summary?
One page, entered in three Research.gov text boxes with a combined limit of 4,600 characters.
Does it have to be in the third person?
Yes. The NSF proposal guide asks that the summary be written in the third person.
Can I upload a PDF instead?
Only when the summary uses special characters the text boxes cannot hold. In that case NSF accepts a one-page PDF with the same three headings.
Related guides: Where to spend your words. Writing for a reviewer with 40 proposals. Federal grant databases: Grants.gov, SAM.gov, SBIR.gov. How to read a NOFO without missing the trap. All free templates.
Let Quillify write the first draft.
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