HDIF 3rd Round of Funding

The Human Development Innovation Fund (HDIF) has now opened its 3rd round of funding to find innovative and sustainable solutions to create social impact in education, health and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) across Tanzania. The fund is part of an overall £39.5 million investment ininnovation in Tanzania by UK Aid.

What we fund

HDIF is now accepting funding applications for pilot and scale-up projects between £500,000 and £1,000,000 (exceptions can be made for compelling applications for a grant not lower than £200,000). 

In this round, HDIF seeks to fund organizations to implement innovative pilot and scale up projects in WASH and Early Childhood Development (ECD), as detailed under the following challenge statements.

Early Childhood Development (ECD) – To improve opportunities for ECD for vulnerable children aged 0-6 that will improve children’s readiness and receptiveness to learning, and improve their general health and well-being.

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) – To increase demand, uptake and sustainability of improved sanitation facilities, hand washing with soap at critical times and menstrual hygiene management, through innovative financing mechanisms, technology, and behaviour change promotion.

Selection criteria

Each HDIF funded project must satisfy the funding round’s eligibility criteria and will be scored against other applications based on 5 selection criteria:

Innovation: HDIF defines ‘innovation’ as an approach, idea, technology or service delivery method that is new to Tanzania and/or the world, or offers an improvement or scaling up. HDIF has adapted Doblin’s 10 Types of Innovation (https://www.doblin.com/ten-types) as a framework for the classifying supported innovations. 

Developmental impact: HDIF will evaluate how your proposed project could contribute to the objectives of HDIF and create meaningful benefits for large numbers of the poor, children under five, women and girls, and the vulnerable.

Viability: HDIF assesses the potential viability and sustainability of the innovation and the potential for larger systems change. For any innovation to have higher chances of being sustainable, it should have the following aspects:
Affordability: being cheap enough for people to be able to buy or gain access to (and profitable enough to produce).
Maintainability: a measure of the ease and rapidity with which a system or equipment or approach can be restored to operational status following a failure. Maintainability is applicable to both material and social components of a system.
Enrolment: engaging and securing commitment from the end users of a product, service or system and supportive practices from communities, organizations or social environment.

Organizational capability: HDIF evaluates the capacity of the organization and its partners to design, manage, and scale innovation in Tanzania, including a formal review of fiduciary risks and leadership capacity related to the proposals. 

Results Management: HDIF will review the ability to measure, monitor, and evaluate the impact of the project to ensure lessons learned can be captured and shared to improve and scale up appropriate innovations.

Who should apply?

HDIF funds non-state actors and specifically encourages applications from the private sector, including, but not limited to, private-for-profit organisations, social entrepreneurs, and other nonstate actors either involved or interested in the delivery of quality pro-poor services.

Applicants who demonstrate their commitment to sustainability with counter-part or match funding will be considered favourably.

An applicant for HDIF funding is an organisation that:

• Is not afraid of challenging the status quo.
• Can demonstrate the use of new models of service delivery, whilst working with and developing new technologies and techniques.
• Can demonstrate sustainability and the ability to scale-up innovations.
• Understands the need to and actively shares knowledge with the wider community.

How do you apply?

Stage 1 | Submit a Business Plan online. The first step is the submission of an initial business plan setting out the project idea being proposed for funding. Once the completed application has been received by HDIF in the prescribed template, the applicant will receive an email acknowledgement. At stage one, two types of reviews will be performed:
(i) Initial Eligibility Criteria Review: a simple screening of the business plan will be performed to ensure the applicant and application are eligible for consideration. Only applicants that fully meet the eligibility criteria set out in Annex A will move to the Scoring Stage.
(ii) Business Plan Scoring: at this stage, eligible applications will be scored by the HDIF Technical Review Panel against the following five (5) selection criteria on a scale of 0‐5 and weighting each score as shown in the table below:

Stage 2 | Refine Business Plan. If the HDIF Technical Review Panel determines an applicant’s business plan is potentially fundable, the applicant will be invited to submit a refined business plan for their project together with other accompanying documentation.

Stage 3 | Funding awarded by HDIF. HDIF will select the most qualified applicants from Stage 2 in which to award the grants. HDIF will then provide the applicant with technical support throughout the life-cycle of the grant. 

Visit www.hdif-tz.org/round3 where you can find more information about the process, download templates and guidelines, read frequently asked questions and register for updates on events, information sessions and impending deadlines.

Upcoming Information Sessions

1. July 4, 2017: Information Sessions at COSTECH
a. ECD Group: 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
b. WASH Group: 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM

2. July 17, 2017: WEBINAR from 03:00 PM East Africa Time for 1 Hour. You can join the meeting from your computer, tablet or smartphone via this link https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/804429125