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.