Read the evaluation criteria first. Everything else in an SBIR solicitation tells you what to submit; the evaluation criteria tell you what earns points, and they are the only part reviewers are actually scoring against. Founders who read front to back usually run out of patience before they reach that section, then write a proposal organized around their technology instead of around the rubric.
The two halves of the document
Every solicitation splits into general instructions and topic descriptions. The general instructions are agency-wide: eligibility, required registrations, proposal format, page and font limits, required volumes, submission mechanics, and the evaluation criteria. They rarely change much between cycles, but they do change, so read the current version rather than one you saved last time.
The topic description is the specific technical problem. It typically has a background paragraph, an objective, a list of what Phase I should produce, what Phase II would produce, and sometimes references. Some agencies bundle dozens of topics into one solicitation; others release them separately. When the two halves conflict — a topic asking for something the general instructions forbid — ask the agency, do not guess. A practical habit is to print the topic, print the evaluation criteria, and keep only those two pages next to you while drafting; everything else in the solicitation is a rule to obey rather than a thing to write about.
What the evaluation criteria actually mean
Most agencies score on some version of three things: the technical merit and innovation of the approach, the qualifications of the team and facilities, and the commercial potential of the result. Weights differ by agency, and some publish them explicitly. Where weights are published, treat them as a budget for your page count — if commercialization is a third of the score, it does not belong in a paragraph at the end. Our guide to how federal review panels score proposals covers what happens on the other side of the desk, and the commercialization plan deserves its own treatment.
Limits, volumes, and the questions window
Page limits, font and margin rules, required volumes and file formats are all per-agency and per-solicitation. Do not carry a number over from another agency or an earlier cycle; find it in the general instructions of the document you are answering and write it down before you draft. The same goes for the budget volume, where the arithmetic has to match the narrative — see the budget mistakes that cost otherwise strong proposals.
Most solicitations also run a formal questions-and-answers mechanism. Questions submitted through it are usually answered publicly so every applicant sees the response, and that published log is worth reading even if you have no question of your own — it tells you what confused other applicants and how the agency interprets its own wording. This is different from direct contact with a topic author, which is permitted only in the pre-release period; our piece on talking to a program manager explains the etiquette.
Projects House works with founders on the technical volume — the approach, the risks, and the Phase I plan a reviewer can believe. Send us the solicitation through the contact form.