Let's start with the problem: America
is facing a time of fiscal austerity. Meanwhile, around the globe,
development challenges of devastating scale continue to drive a strong
moral and strategic imperative for the United States to stay a leader in
international development. Given budget constraints, we need to work
harder than ever to find solutions that get the biggest bang for our
development bucks.
In October 2010,
USAID launched Development Innovation Ventures. Through DIV, USAID
awards grants to compelling new development solutions, rigorously tests
them, and helps scale those that are proven successful to become
development grand slams.
How it works
First,
we run a competition for ideas. We recognize that development
breakthroughs can come from anywhere—a lab in a university, a local
person who has deep contextual knowledge, or a passionate entrepreneur.
Perhaps it will come from you.
We seek solutions that are several times more cost effective than current practice. These ideas do not have to be technological solutions, but also new business models, new processes, or even novel combinations of tried and true techniques. We look for the solutions potential to scale big, to tens of millions of beneficiaries within ten years.
Next,
we test if the idea delivers the targeted development outcomes, and at a
dramatically lower cost than current best practice. We use rigorous and
cutting-edge methods for evaluating project impact. Many of our current
grants include randomized trials of development interventions,
comparing treatment groups to control groups to analyze development
impact. As part of our model, we give out our awards incrementally—if
your idea works, and only if it works, you can compete for additional
stages of funding.
We fund ideas that
are in different phases of rollout, and depending on their current
phase applicants can propose a project in any of the three stages
below. To move from one stage from the next, applicants must
re-compete.
STAGE ONE
is for projects in the proof of concept phase: DIV will grant these
projects up to $100,000 dollars over one year so that grantees can
refine prototypes and gather the evidence they need to pull in more
investment and grow.
STAGE TWO
is for larger projects, typically to expand across a country. DIV will
grant Stage Two projects up to $1 million. In exchange, Stage Two
projects will build in rigorous testing to prove if the project is
viable at its larger size.
STAGE THREE
is for much larger projects. For grants of up to $15 million over
several years, solutions that have already proven to work at a large
scale will be expanded much further, and often into multiple countries.
By
the end of Stage Three, successful projects will have rigorous evidence
of multinational impact. At this point DIV will exit, and we expect
that the projects will commercialize or be replicated by various
developing country governments or donor institutions. And so, within ten
years, the best solutions will be mainstreamed and reach tens of
millions of beneficiaries around the globe.
DIV welcomes applications from many types of organizations including
foundations, U.S. and non-U.S. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs),
faith-based organizations, U.S. and non-U.S. private businesses,
business and trade associations, international organizations, U.S. and
non-U.S. colleges and universities, civic groups, regional
organizations, etc. All applicants must be legally recognized
organizational entities under applicable law, and organizations. (As
with all USAID grants, any organizations that are in countries that are
ineligible for assistance under the FAA or related appropriations acts
are ineligible).
