DIV FUND: REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
SECTION A: OVERVIEW
Who we are: The DIV Fund is a tiered, evidence-based, open innovation fund that identifies and supports solutions with the potential to cost-effectively improve the lives of millions of people living in poverty around the world. We aim to serve as a discovery engine for global development, building a pipeline of evidence-driven innovations that drive impact at scale.
How we fund: Our goal is to maximize the expected social return on our investment. To enable this, we support innovators and researchers through three funding tiers, calibrating funding according to our three core principles: evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness, and potential for durable scale. At earlier stages of funding, we look for potential. At higher funding levels, we look for demonstrated results. This tiered approach balances measured risk-taking with progressively higher requirements, in order to discover new ideas, validate what works, and catalyze the scale-up of proven solutions.
What we fund: The DIV Fund supports innovators and researchers piloting, rigorously testing, and scaling ways to meaningfully and measurably improve the lives of people living in poverty. We are deliberately open to all kinds of innovations, operating across all sectors, with potential to impact the lives of millions of people when delivered at scale. We are open to innovations with any viable pathway to scale, be that through public systems, philanthropic support, private markets, or a combination of funding sources. Our tiered criteria outline distinct requirements for three different stages, based on innovations’ proposed pathways to scale.
Where we fund: The DIV Fund supports innovations addressing challenges in low- and middle-income countries (as classified by the World Bank). We prioritize proposals based on their expected social return (see section B for more information), and give more weight to improvements expected to benefit people with lower incomes.
What we mean by “innovation”: We take a broad view of innovation, considering any solution with real potential to generate impact at scale more affordably or more efficiently than existing approaches. Innovation is not limited to physical inventions. A relevant innovation could be a product, service, policy, program, or delivery model that delivers better results. An innovation might be an entirely novel idea, but it could also be a new way of delivering an existing solution, or a simple process improvement that unlocks impact. We also invest in evidence generation for widely-used approaches that don’t yet have rigorous evidence.
Who is eligible to apply: We accept applications from non-profit organizations, social enterprises, universities and research institutions, technical assistance providers supporting government innovation, and businesses, as well as partnerships among multiple types of organizations. If you have a promising idea that could generate impact at scale, we want to hear it.
Read more and to apply at https://www.div.fund/apply/rfp
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