The United State Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Annual Program Statement (APS) for Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) is inviting applications from all types of organizations including foundations, U.S. and non-U.S. 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.
DIV brings 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.
DIV supports innovators through a Development Innovation Fund that:
- Provides seed funds to external applicants to undertake the type of high-return and sometimes high-risk projects that breakthrough innovations often require;
- Develops, refines, and rigorously tests 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;
- Transitions 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
- Values bold new partnerships which allow USAID investments to access and leverage the financial, staffing, ideas, expertise and distribution networks of others.
DIV aims to institutionalize further in USAID the serendipitous process by which great ideas are conceptualized, developed, refined to meet real-world operational challenges, tested, and ultimately scaled up to change the world in fundamental ways.
The closing date to submit applications is 21 July 2011. For more information, visit grants.gov and search by funding opportunity number for “M-OAA-GRO-LMA-10-0198”
