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Due: September 14, 2010

BACKGROUND

The Need to Address Infant and Young Child Feeding

An estimated 1.4 million children die each year because of sub-optimal breastfeeding practices. Inadequate complementary feeding also contributes to micronutrient deficiencies, underweight, and stunting, which are linked to an additional 1-2 million child deaths each year. Despite decades of experience, interventions to improve infant and young child feeding (IYCF) have failed to reach their maximum impact. There are multiple reasons: low coverage of effective interventions, incomplete understanding of economic and cultural barriers, incorrect assumptions about causes, absence of private sector strategies to deliver appropriate and affordable products for complementary feeding, lack of well-documented success at scale, and lack of consensus within the global community on the best way to deliver results at scale.

Funding for the Alive & Thrive IYCF Small Grants Program

Alive & Thrive (A&T) is an initiative dedicated to reducing undernutrition and death caused by sub-optimal infant and young child feeding practices. The A&T Small Grants Program is one part of the larger A&T initiative. A&T is currently funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and is being implemented by a consortium of organizations. AED (Academy for Educational Development) is managing and coordinating the initiative, working in partnership with Save the Children, BRAC, World Vision, IFPRI, GMMB and UC Davis (University of California, Davis). The A&T Small Grants Program, which is managed by UC Davis, was created to test and seed innovative ideas for scaling up effective and sustainable IYCF interventions. The overall goal is to identify new solutions that can be more widely adopted, by linking innovative research to program delivery.

A&T SMALL GRANTS PROGRAM

Program Priorities

The A&T Small Grants Program aims to fund operational research projects that will identify novel approaches and overcome key barriers to improving IYCF at scale in low and middle-income countries. Approaches that can potentially be extended to different countries/settings are of greatest interest.

In the first year of the Small Grants Program (2009), the request for Letters of Interest listed multiple potential topics for research. In this second year, the focus is on operational issues related to IYCF interventions, as listed below. Letters of Interest that do not address one or more of these issues are highly unlikely to be competitive.

High priority issues:

1. Optimal ways to “bundle” different interventions (i.e. combinations of interventions that are delivered using the same delivery platform or channel), at least one of which includes IYCF
2. Optimal delivery channels for different intervention “bundles”
3. Costs and benefits of intervention “bundles”
4. Best strategies to reach the ultra-poor to improve IYCF
5. Comparison of behavior change communication strategies for better IYCF programming and advocacy

The emphasis on intervention “bundles” reflects the growing consensus that integrating IYCF interventions into broader programmatic initiatives is likely to be a more cost-effective and sustainable approach than stand-alone IYCF interventions.

Grants Process and Funds Available

Grants will be awarded to successful applications during a two-step application process that begins with the submission of a Letter of Interest (LOI). Selected applicants will be asked to submit a full proposal. The LOIs and full proposals will be evaluated by the A&T Technical Advisory Group. Not all applicants who are asked to submit full proposals will receive funding. The amount of funding available and the size of each grant will be dependent upon the availability of funds and the number of acceptable applications received.

Please note that over 400 LOIs were submitted for last year’s competition and 8 projects were selected to receive funding (less than 2 percent). Therefore, please pay careful attention to the evaluation criteria listed below. Projects outside the scope of the A&T Small Grants Program will not move on to the formal review process. A&T anticipates distributing a total of $225,000 in this second and final year of the small grants program. For this round of awards, it is anticipated that 3 projects will be funded.

Awards for small grants will generally be in the range of $50,000-100,000 USD. Grant requests may not exceed $100,000 (for the total duration of the project). One- or two-year projects may be proposed, but in the latter case the second year of funding will be contingent upon satisfactory progress by the recipient during the first year.

Evaluation Criteria

The following criteria will be used to evaluate the LOIs:

• Responsiveness to A&T goals and priorities
• Scientific rigor of the project design and evaluation
• Innovation
• Feasibility within given budget limits
• Potential for direct translation into IYCF program delivery
• Potential for application to different countries/settings
• Demonstrated understanding of infant and young child feeding practices, programs, policies and infrastructure in the proposed study area
• Demonstrated ability to manage grants and budgets
• Demonstrated organizational capacity
• Estimated cost based on proposed activities

What activities are eligible for funding?

Grant activities can include formal research studies, development and evaluation of pilot programs, operational research, testing of novel public-private partnerships, evaluation of various approaches to removing obstacles to improved IYCF at the country level, and related work. Add-ons to ongoing larger projects are allowable. All applications will need to specify how the success of the project will be evaluated.

What activities are NOT eligible for funding?

Applicants who propose to simply identify barriers to scaling up IYCF interventions, without attempting to test approaches to overcome such barriers, will not be selected to submit full proposals. In the first year of the Small Grants Program, many of the LOIs received were rejected because they did not include strategies to overcome such barriers.

Who may apply for a grant?

Grants can be awarded to any organization with a demonstrated interest and commitment to improving IYCF practices, including research organizations, non-government organizations, public (e.g., government) institutions, and private sector organizations. All recipients must have prior experience conducting relevant IYCF activities and must demonstrate prior experience in efficient and effective fiscal management. In the case of partnerships, a lead organization should be identified that meets these criteria and can submit the LOI as the prime applicant.

What types of costs are covered?

Grant monies may be used to pay for salaries, supplies, equipment and travel that are specifically related to achieving the objectives of the project.

Indirect costs are limited to 10% of direct costs. The total, including both direct and indirect costs, cannot exceed $100,000.

Grant monies may not be used to cover the following types of costs:

• Purchase of motor vehicles, office furniture
• Construction or physical improvement of offices/facilities

What is the timeline for receiving grants and for project completion?

1. LOIs are due on September 14, 2010
2. Applicants will be notified on or about October 18, 2010 if they have been selected to submit a full proposal
3. Full grant proposals will be due on November 16, 2010
4. Grant proposal submissions will be evaluated by the TAG in December, 2010
5. Grant recipients will be notified in January, 2011
6. Year 1 project activities should be expected to begin within 30 days of receipt of the signed grant funding document.

Applicants who progress to the proposal stage will receive further details regarding the funding schedule.

What if I have questions or need clarification regarding the LOI or the Grants Fund?

We are happy to respond to questions submitted in writing. You may email your questions to ATresearch@ucdavis.edu.

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