I think you are 100% right, it is a very tight deadline with very few manhours. I did not advance far enough in the proposal process to learn their budget but that sounds plausible to me.
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a chicken-and-egg problem where the funding application also has to contain a planned date and venue.
As it reads from the letter, it does seem like they handed in their application 3 months before the event. That seems like quite short notice and I would have expected ~6 months before the event, especially if there is no certainty/pre-commitment that the grant will go through.
I'm aware. There's no timeline for when a proposal may actually be considered. It certainly isn't submission order. So proposals sit around for an indefinite amount of time before entering into the process to give them a definitive decision.
6 months is way in advance. PSF policy is to ask 4-6 weeks before the event (Timeframe: We require that applications be submitted 6 weeks before the event/project start date - this gives us enough time to thoroughly review, ask questions, and have enough time to send you the funds.), so 6 months is more than enough time.
And we're missing the issue: the organizers were asking for $9k, which by all means should have been an easy yes/no. If they would have asked for 100k, maybe, but $9k is chump change.
RFPs are due by Oct 19. My first reaction was "there's no way city and state governments can work together to produce incentive packages that quickly".
On second thought, it makes me wonder if they're shopping for local governments which can be that responsive with an eye on getting stuff done efficiently in the future (permitting, zoning).
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