The Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s Large Grant Facility

Deadline: 6 May 2014

Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is accepting Expression of Interest (EoI) for Large Grants from non-profit institutions. The grant can be requested for innovative projects in development or implementation stage. Request can be made for grant size in between £75,000 and £150,000.

Steps of Innovation supported through Large Grants -

1.     Development –

The development of an innovation by creating practical, actionable plans and guidelines.

Turning ideas into action, the development stage takes designs from the drawing board and transforms them into real-world solutions.

2.     Implementation –

Implementation of an Innovation to produce real examples of changed practice, testing the innovation to see how it compares to existing solutions.

Often using pilot projects to move beyond proof of concept, this stage establishes how an Innovation performs in practice. Indicating whether it is successful and should be scaled-up.

Eligibility Criteria –

Lead applicants must be either a non-profit institution such as a non-governmental organization; or a public or governmental institution; or an academic or research institution.

The project may be located anywhere in the world and applicant organization can be registered/established anywhere in the world.

Proposed innovation can be both in the form of consortia application or a single organization.

One organization can submit up to 2 proposals but one organization can be lead (or single) applicant of only one innovation.

Proposed innovation must be in a humanitarian response setting as per the definition of humanitarian aid – Humanitarian aid is aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of emergencies.

Applications must be submitted via online submission portal to be considered for funding.

Selection Criteria –

• Potential impact and scalability
• Methodology & approach
• Project feasibility and effectiveness
• Team composition and capacity to implement

Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s Small Grant Facility for NGOs

The Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) has a Small Grant Facility to provide funding support to organizations and individuals to identify, nurture and share innovative and scalable solutions to the challenges facing effective humanitarian assistance.

The Fund seeks to work towards: enabling and supporting humanitarian innovators to move creative ideas through the innovation process; supporting them in building new partnerships with key actors; enabling the lessons from grant funded projects and from analysis of innovation processes in humanitarian contexts to be disseminated more widely; and strengthening existing relationships between humanitarian agencies, academics and those in the private sector engaged in innovation processes.

The basic criteria of applying for the grants at HIF are that the project proposed has to be innovative and it has to be related to humanitarian aid.

HIF’s Small Grant Facility is open all year round and offers grants of up to £20,000 for the recognition, invention & diffusion of a humanitarian innovation.

There are five key stages in the innovation process and our small grants are awarded at three of those stages: Recognition, Diffusion and Invention.

The Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s WASH Grants

The Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s (HIF) WASH (Water, Sanitation & Hygiene) Fund gives an opportunity for gives solvers to develop innovative WASH solutions to help save lives and reduce suffering during disasters and humanitarian crises.

The HIF hopes to capture peoples’ imaginations through these challenges, so that when natural disasters or conflicts strike around the world, innovative technologies can help aid workers to extend lifesaving assistance to the most vulnerable people.

The HIF’s WASH facility is managed by Enhancing Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance (ELRHA) and supported by UK aid from the UK Government.

Currently there are 2 challenges open under this grant facility

Solid-waste Management in Humanitarian Response

Latrine Lighting in Emergencies

For more information about all the 3 types of grants, visit this link.

Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) for Humanitarian Assistance Projects

Humanitarian Innovation Fund’s (HIF) small grant facility is always open to accepting proposals round the year. However, before applying for this opportunity, it is important to understand what humanitarian assistance is. Unlike any other direct intervention or assistance to the community, the humanitarian assistance involves providing services to the needy community facing or those remaining at the risk of a humanitarian crisis such as natural disaster.

According to the Global Humanitarian Assistance, the humanitarian assistance includes:

Material relief assistance and services (shelter, water, medicines etc.);

Emergency food aid (short-term distribution and supplementary feeding programmes);

Relief coordination, protection and support services (coordination, logistics and communications).

Reconstruction relief and rehabilitation (repairing pre-existing infrastructure as opposed to longer-term activities designed to improve the level of infrastructure;

Disaster prevention and preparedness (disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, contingency stocks and planning).

However, simply listing the above activities in a proposal and submitting it will not be enough to apply for funding from HIF. It is necessary to ensure that your project is innovative – it should lead to testing of new ideas with the use of modern technologies.  It should also involve other partners and stakeholders like the local government agency, research institution, academic organization or a community-based mechanism in your project area which can enhance the sustainability of your efforts. The project should also be scalable – which means its strategy can be replicated elsewhere and its success can be widely disseminated.

The focus of this project funding is innovation. NGOs need to brainstorm themselves to understand and develop innovative projects before applying for HIF.

How to develop ‘innovative’ projects to apply for Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF)

The Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) encourages organizations to submit proposals on innovative projects providing humanitarian assistance under its small grant facility. But the term ‘innovative’ can be vague and NGOs may require a better understanding of the term before applying for such funding.

HIF itself defines ‘innovations’ as “dynamic processes which focus on the creation and implementation of new or improved products and services, processes, positions and paradigms. Successful innovations are those that result in improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, quality or social outcomes/impacts.”

We can understand this theoretical definition by going through some of the projects previously funded by HIF.

HIF had recently had announced a challenge on the InnoCentive where it requested problem solvers to provide effective solutions for the disposal of human waste during times of natural disaster. Although digging of temporary latrines is an easy way of disposing human waste, certain land areas can be very soft under natural disaster conditions – so what can be done under such situations? It’s an innovative thought to even find out such a problem and present it. According to Nicolas Kröger, Manager, HIF, it purposefully selected this area for seeking solution under this challenge because it considered the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) sector as crucial for communities suffering from natural calamities.

Another innovative project funded by HIF is the Citizen-based DRR system implemented in the Indian Himalayan region where the community is empowered with disaster preparedness and the use of ICT and community-based early warning system and model relief system are integrated.

In Sri Lanka, HIF has funded a project where a new invention called VoiceICT4D has been used for community-based emergency alerting and reporting.

Another innovative project funded by HIF is for the development of a cheap, easy to transport wheelchair that could be used in emergencies such as earthquakes.

After reviewing these projects, it is important for NGOs in developing countries to understand and focus the need for innovation combined with the use of new technologies for winning the grant from HIF. HIF is always willing to support small organizations in developing countries; however, the lack of innovative proposals often leads to rejection of many NGO applications.

How to apply for the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF)

As the small grant facility is open throughout the year, it is an ideal opportunity for small NGOs in developing countries to conceptualize innovative projects and submit proposals on them to the HIF.

To apply for the small grant, you need to first download the Small Grants Application Pack available at this link. There is an application form, budget templage, CV template and Work Plan template which need to be filled and submitted by email. Interestingly, HIF does not request lengthy proposals at least for the small grants. So NGOs can quickly develop the five page proposal and then enclose the supporting information.

Before starting to write the proposal, make sure that you read through the previously funded projects and develop your own framework in the following manner. This framework is for your own personal use but it will be helpful in developing the idea in your proposal.

Summary: (Explain to yourself the vision and objective of the project in a couple of lines especially highlighting the problem and how you are addressing it with your innovative intervention)

Challenge(s) to be addressed: (Here you can list out the challenges or problems that you are going to address – remember that the funding you are requesting is for a humanitarian assistance purpose. Do not go outside of this topic)

Innovation: (Since innovation is a key element of the project and HIF has great focus on it, here you can specify what innovative idea you are bringing in for the success of the project – it can be a new technology or it can simply be an idea developed at the local level)

Key Deliverables / Impact: Deliverables: (List out the key results that will be achieved from the project).

To know more about HIF, visit this LINK