Maybe pay people who's only job it is is to talk to the researchers and write the proposal for them? Someone smart enough to get stuff explained to them, but with the communication skills to boil that down into something the money people can understand?

It's a pretty common position in software engineering because programmers and business people are pretty bad at communicating with each other.

No, it only takes a long time because there's so little to go around. Do you think defense funding takes months and years to award grants? No.

I sure wouldn't call it scientific progress, if that's what you're implying.