Fighting Malaria Together Newsletter - May 2011

Changes in the Global Fund Round 11 grant application process

This year, the Global Fund introduces new application forms and requires consolidation of existing grants.

The Global Fund’s Round 11 Call for Proposals will be launched on August 15, 2011, with a submission due date of December 15, 2011. This gives potential applicants a month more than usual from the time of the posting of the call for applications and the anticipated deadline. Round 11 will use new forms that are expected to be sufficiently revised and refined to warrant the need for extra programme orientation on the forms. The Roll Back Malaria Harmonization Working Group is developing a training that will take place early in the process, as well as a Mock Technical Review Panel prior to submission, to help applicants prepare for the expected changes.

The revised forms are not the only change applicants will see during Round 11; from this point, consolidation of existing grants will be mandatory. The Global Fund is moving toward single streams of funding (per Principal Recipient/per disease) based on consolidation of earlier existing funding streams. If a country is not applying for Round 11, they do not need to consolidate, but all future applications will require that existing grants are consolidated in order for the grants to be approved. The general sequence for consolidating existing grants is to consolidate the performance framework, the monitoring and evaluation plan, the work plans, and then the budgets.It is also possible to consolidate all existing grants prior to the proposal process. Some of the perceived benefits are: reduced reporting requirements, ‘holistic’ periodic reviews every three years per disease, single funding agreements per Principal Recipient, regular three-year commitment cycles, and alignment to national reporting cycles.