The USAID Fighting Ebola Broad Agency Announcement : Partnership call for Ebola Challenge Addenda

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) the Global Health Bureau and the US Global Development Lab have jointly announced grant funding entitled USAID Fighting Ebola BAA (Broad Agency Announcement). This Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) seeks opportunities to co-create, co-design, co-invest, and collaborate in the development, testing, and scaling of practical and cost-effective innovations that can help healthcare workers on the front lines provide better care and stop the spread of Ebola.

The USAID will issue Addenda to this BAA that will present specific Ebola Challenges. The Ebola Challenge Addenda will focus on identified problem s, solutions, scalability opportunities, feasibility studies, and other research and development initiatives addressing the problem and challenge statements.  Potential partners will have to respond to individual Ebola Challenge Addenda, not to this BAA.

Public, private, for-profit, and non-profit organizations, as well as institutions of higher education, public international organizations, non-governmental organizations, US and non-US government organizations, and international donor organizations are encouraged to partner to address Ebola. Depending on the stage of development, USAID will consider different levels of risk, evidence, and data on the potential for impact and scale.

Eligibility Criteria

Each individual BAA Addendum will specify the criteria for selection and proposals will be evaluated against the BAA evaluation criteria and applicable BAA Addendum.

• Proposals must allow USAID to reach out to potential partners with recognized expertise in relevant areas; and to co-create, co-design, co-invest and collaborate with partners.
• All organizations must be determined to be responsive to this BAA and sufficiently responsible to perform or participate in the final award type.
• At the initial stage of sourcing, prototype or proof of concept, the design of the innovation should be a new or dramatically improved approach with the potential for significant impact at a lower cost and without any reduction in efficacy as compared to the current standard.
• At the piloting stage, the product or service must be viable and demonstrate significant impact, behavioral change, and customer demand.
• At the transitioning to scale stage, data and evidence must indicate that significant impact can be achieved at a lower price point, a business or other implementation model is being tested and sustain ability demonstrated, any legal or regulatory challenges are understood as part of a market strategy, and the quality of the impact, product, or service will not be significantly affected by expansion or widespread adoption.
• Innovations that demonstrate such evidence will be reviewed for endorsement to scale across multiple countries.
• The reputations of organizations, their past performance, and the managerial and technical ability of the person or team of people engaged in the endeavor are always significant considerations in assessing the potential and the risks associated with each award.

For more information, please visit grants.gov and search for funding opportunity number BAA-EBOLA-2014.