The Fund for Innovation in Development (FID) is inviting innovators and researchers from around the world to apply for grant funding to more effectively or efficiently address poverty and inequality.
Through flexible grant funding, FID enables innovators and researchers to test new ideas, build rigorous evidence of what works, and scale the highest-impact and most cost-effective solutions.
Objectives
- To encourage and facilitate innovation, from wherever it might come
- To accelerate global innovation in the fight against poverty and inequality
- To rigorously evaluate new ideas through collaboration with the research community
- To support the scale and widespread deployment of the best solutions
Principles
FID makes funding decisions based on three core principles:
- Rigorous proof of an impact on improving the living conditions of people living in poverty.
- Evidence of clear, measurable outcomes demonstrates what works in the fight against poverty and inequality.
FID relies on rigorous evidence of causal impact in determining which innovations to fund and supports research to generate evidence on development innovations.
- Cost-effectiveness in the achievement of specific development objectives, compared to existing approaches.
Taking a best-in-class approach to cost-effectiveness, FID invests in innovations that have the potential to deliver more impact for every euro than alternative solutions.
- Potential for scale, widespread adoption, and sustainability. FID’s ultimate goal is to support impactful development solutions that will replicate and scale to improve millions of lives while being financially sustained through the public and/or private sector.
Type of Grants
FID accepts applications for five types of grants:
Prepare Grants (up to €50,000): Prepare Grants are small project preparation grants that can be used to support the development of proposals for Stages 1, 2, or 3 grants for promising applicants who otherwise may have had less access to or ability to secure funding from a competitive fund such as FID.
Stage 1: Pilot Grants (up to €200,000): FID funds Stage 1 Pilot Grants to support the piloting of innovations that are early in development and need real-world testing to refine the basic model and establish the viability of the innovation at a small scale, including testing core assumptions around operational, social, and financial viability.
Stage 2: Test and Position for Scale Grants (up to €1,500,000): FID funds Stage 2 Test and Position for Scale Grants to support the further testing and continued growth of innovations to assess the likelihood that they can achieve both impact and viability at a larger scale.
Stage 3: Transition to Scale Grants (up to €4,000,000): FID funds Stage 3 Transition to Scale Grants to support the transition of rigorously tested and validated solutions to widespread scaling, such as bringing a tested innovation to national scale or to new contexts, with the goal of eventually achieving widespread adoption in one or more countries.
Transforming Public Policy (TPP) Grants (up to €150,000): FID funds Transforming Public Policy (TPP) Grants to support two types of projects: those focused on the institutionalization of specific evidence-based innovations with demonstrated cost-effectiveness and scalability into public policies at large scale; those focused on strengthening the capacity of low- and middle-income governments to design, test, pilot, and scale evidence-based innovations (e.g., the establishment of an evidence-based innovation lab in government or support for a government effort to collect and process data to evaluate the impact of social policies)
What they fund
Open Innovation: FID takes a broad view of innovation, considering any solution with strong potential to achieve development impact at scale in less costly, faster, or otherwise more feasible ways than existing approaches.
This can include a wide range of innovations intended to improve the lives of the poor.
Our definition of innovation includes, for example, new approaches to improve delivery of essential goods and services, process or managerial innovations, improvements in public services that facilitate access and improve outcomes, as well as new technologies or new applications of existing technologies.
New “low-tech” approaches designed to be sustainable and accessible and which can have a significant impact on the lives of the poorest will also be eligible.
FID seeks to support any innovation that more effectively or efficiently addresses poverty and inequality around the world, with a specific focus on innovations targeting particularly acute problems of marginalized populations.
Sectors: FID accepts applications for innovations in any sector which addresses poverty and inequality, and specifically encourages applications for innovations in education, health, climate change, and gender equality.
Within each sector, FID particularly encourages applications centered on interventions that improve outcomes for marginalized groups, including, for example, women and girls, underrepresented minorities, and refugees and displaced persons.
Geographies: FID funds initiatives in all low- and middle-income countries, with special emphasis on the countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, that are official priorities for French development assistance.
Eligibility Criteria
- FID accepts applications from nearly any type of applicant, independently or in partnership with others, including research institutes and institutions of higher education; governments or public agencies; non-governmental organizations; and private, for-profit companies.
- Individuals applying independently and public international and multilateral institutions are ineligible for funding. FID accepts applications for funding from innovators and researchers of all nationalities living in all geographies, but specifically encourages applications from organizations based in, led by, and significantly staffed by people from low and middle-income countries; people who identify as women; and other marginalized populations.
- FID accepts applications in French or English.
Applications Accepted All Year Round!
