It's a bit chicken and egg though: I would expect that a grant would be much more likely to be granted for an event that had a decent amount of groundwork already done? For new events especially, you'd want to see some commitment.
I'd want to see a plan, for sure. I would, in the place of the PSF folks, not want to be handed a "this is already in motion, and we are depending on funding so you better say yes."
This doesn't appear to be the case, and they had a plan if the PSF had said no. The problem is that they didn't say anything, which in turn meant they couldn't finalize the program or answer to their own requests for travel expense (either way).
