Deadline: 27 March 2014
Saving Lives at Birth Challenge Partners- United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and DFID invite applications to respond to ‘Saving Lives at Birth: A Grand Challenge for Development (Round IV)’. The grant program is an outcome of the realization that there is intense need of groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in poor, hard-to-reach communities around the time of childbirth. The call invites proposals on innovative ideas that can leapfrog conventional approaches.
The grants program will provide support to two kinds of innovations –
- Seed Funds – to innovations that provide solutions to positively impact health outcomes for pregnant women and their babies in low resource settings. Seed funds are for up to two years and total of 25 applications will be funded. Depending on the scope and scale of the innovation, the grant amount can be up to $250,000 USD per project.
- Transition to Scale Funds- to develop, refine and test the impact of integrated solutions. Transition Funds can be for up to four years and around five applications will be funded. Depending on the scope and scale of the innovation, the grant amount can be up to $2 million USD per project.
Eligibility Criteria –
- Applications from all types of organizations including foreign and domestic for-profit companies, non-profit organizations, faith-based organizations, foundations, academic institutions, civic groups and regional organizations are accepted for the grants program. Individuals and governments are not eligible to apply. For the purposes of this RFA, publicly-funded universities or universities with government affiliations are not considered governments.
- Proposed solutions for seed funds may have been previously tested (but preliminary data are not required), but should not be current standard practice; however, innovative variations on existing approaches may be considered (e.g., a new means to deliver an existing service or a new way to make an old model demonstrably more effective or cost effective). Incremental solutions that are only slight improvements over existing approaches will not be funded. Previous Saving Lives at Birth seed grantees are eligible to apply. Applicants may need more than one seed grant to reach proof of concept.
- Projects for transition funds must have strong evidence in a controlled or limited setting of promising health outcome(s) and/or the reduction of significant barrier(s) to health (i.e., proof of concept) and demand for the solution to warrant expanded support. Applications must provide sufficient and credible evidence to demonstrate their proof of concept and the link to positive impact on maternal and newborn health.
For more information, please visit grants.gov and search for funding opportunity number RFA-OAA-14-000071.
