The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched the Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) to bring “together diverse innovators from academia, the private sector and NGOs to identify, develop, and transition to scale promising approaches to pressing development problems around the world.” These innovations should be proven, cost-effective and scalable. All kinds of organizations can apply for this: NGOs, nonprofits, for-profits, colleges, universities etc around the world.
USAID’s DIV is looking for innovations of a scale like microfinance, which has reached and benefited nearly 75 million end users worldwide. Although this can be very ambitious, yet innovations can record failures in addition to successes. One example given is the PROGRESA, a cash-transfer program in Mexico, which led to its expansion only within the country as well as over 30 other countries.
DIV will provide funding to innovators through the Development Innovation Fund. The Fund will be extremely useful for NGOs and other organizations as it will provide seed grant “to undertake the type of high-return and sometimes high-risk projects that breakthrough innovations often require.” Further, it help develop, refine and rigorously test “the impact of the ideas which prove most promising and can credibly scale to improve the lives of tens of millions of people in multiple countries;” transition “to scale innovations for which there is either compelling evidence of a cost effective impact on the lives of beneficiaries that justifies the long-term use of public funds or a credible plan for long-run scaling using private funds without a subsidy;” and value “bold new partnerships which allow USAID investments to access and leverage the financial, staffing, ideas, expertise and distribution networks of others.”
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