Red Team Reviews

Designed to evaluate multidisciplinary proposals, a “red team review” brings together a group of several subject matter experts to assess a proposal’s competitiveness. A trained facilitator keeps the focus on the sponsor’s review criteria, brings reviewers to consensus on how to improve the proposal, and presents the reviewers’ comments and recommendations for the proposal team. Teams benefit by receiving specific recommendations rather than vague reviewer comments that may conflict with one another.

RADPN offers red team reviews to interdisciplinary University of Minnesota proposal teams seeking to improve the quality and competitiveness of their proposal prior to submission. The purpose of the red team initiative is two-fold--it aims to improve interdisciplinary proposals from the University of Minnesota and to train unit-level research development staff to conduct red team reviews for their own faculty.

Red team reviews cost $750, with proceeds supporting the facilitators’ time and other RADPN activities. University of Minnesota investigators can request red team reviews in two ways:

1. As part of proposal services through SPARC.

2. By emailing radpn@umn.edu with information about the proposal, the team, and the timeline.

When conducting a red team review, RADPN facilitators will:

• Work with proposal teams to identify reviewers and establish a review timeline.

• Contact reviewers with the proposal draft, review framework, and instructions.

• Host and facilitate the review meeting, and gather written feedback when appropriate.

• Consolidate reviewer comments into a set of clear recommendations for the proposal team.

• Deliver recommendations to the proposal team and answer questions in a debrief meeting.