Frequently Asked Questions

As you prepare to apply to DIV, we encourage you to read this page and all materials on our website thoroughly before submitting an application. This FAQ section is limited to the application process.

Apply to DIV

Q: I’m thinking about applying to DIV. Where should I start? 
We are excited that you are thinking about applying to DIV! We strongly encourage all applicants to review DIV’s website for information regarding the grant program and our selection criteria. Of particular importance is our Annual Program Statement (APS), which contains information on DIV’s three core principles and how they apply to each stage of funding. Applicants should also review the sample application, which contains questions that each applicant must answer. The most competitive applicants make a compelling but succinct case on how their innovation addresses each of DIV’s three principles commensurate with the stage of funding applied for. When you are ready to apply, you can access the online application through our How to Apply page. 

Q: How does DIV select grantees? 
DIV reviews applications on a rolling basis. Each applicant undergoes an initial review and the most competitive applicants are invited to the due diligence stage, during which time the DIV team reviews proposals in further depth. Highly competitive proposals are ultimately voted on by a Decision Panel composed of USAID and external experts. The specific criteria and process for application review are outlined in the Annual Program Statement and on our How to Apply page. 

Q: What types of innovations are likely to be competitive? 
DIV is an evidence-driven, open innovation program that supports creative solutions to any global development problem across all sectors in which USAID works. Innovations funded by DIV include products and services, as well as applications of new business or delivery models, production processes, or insights from behavioral economics. Solutions need not be limited to technological or product innovations. 

You can explore the portfolio of current and past DIV winners on https://divportal.usaid.gov/s/. Strong DIV applicants demonstrate a thorough understanding of DIV’s model, especially the emphasis on rigorous evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness, and pathways to scale. In general, competitive innovations are those that have a significant, measurable, scalable, and cost-effective impact on the lives of the poor.

Q: What types of proposals are not likely to be competitive? 
Listed below are common examples of proposed projects that are not likely to be competitive for DIV funding:

• Innovations at the idea stage that have not yet been created (i.e. that are pre-prototype)
• Projects with limited potential to scale cost-effectively (e.g., building schools, constructing immobile physical infrastructure, including schools, power plants or lines, orphanages, or factories)
• Innovations that are unlikely to generate significant development impacts that benefit the “base of the pyramid” (e.g., innovations that target high-income customers)
• Intermediaries with an indirect impact on people’s lives (e.g., incubators, accelerators, start-up boot camps, and other conveners)
• Basic scientific research (e.g., laboratory research of a prototype with no field testing)
• Innovations that are applicable only in very limited contexts that limit their ability to scale—or reach—a large number of people in need (e.g., projects that target a very rare disease)
• Planning, diagnostic, and other tools that are difficult to link directly to measurable development impacts for people living in poverty and that reach millions of people only indirectly (e.g., a stand-alone monitoring or evaluation platform). 

Q: Is DIV only interested in technological or product innovations?

No, DIV is an open innovation program that supports creative solutions to any global development problem. Innovations funded by DIV include new technologies; new ways of delivering or financing goods or services; new business models; cost-effective adaptations to existing solutions; new ways of increasing uptake of highly effective solutions, including replication and scaling to new places; policy innovations; social or behavioral innovations based on insights from behavioral science; and data collection and rigorous evaluation to measure the social impacts of promising innovations.

Q: How selective is the DIV program? 
The DIV program is highly selective. Selection rates vary according to the number of applications received, but DIV selections typically follow the trends below: 

• More than 1,000 applications are submitted to DIV each year.
• About 100 of those 1,000 applicants (ten percent) move beyond the initial review stage and into the due diligence stage, during which time the DIV team reviews proposals in further depth and in some cases, co-creates the project with the applicant. 
• About 20-30 of the initial 1,000 applicants (two to three percent) receive DIV funding after the full evaluation process. 

Q: I have a great idea, but would love DIV’s input on whether it’s a good fit. May I receive guidance from the DIV team before I apply? 
Unfortunately, no. To comply with U.S. Government procurement rules that require fair competition, we are unable to accommodate individual call requests to comment on specific innovation ideas or proposals and whether they would be a “good fit” before an application is submitted.

Eligibility

Q: Who can apply to DIV for a grant? 
Almost anyone! DIV accepts applications from American and non-U.S.-based individuals and organizations, including nonprofit and for-profit entities, researchers, faith-based organizations, governments, and non-governmental organizations. Note that under the DIV Annual Program Statement, funding foreign government organizations is possible only through an approved sub-award agreement with a prime or lead non-governmental recipient (for more information, see ADS 303.3.21).

Q: Does my project have to be implemented in a specific country or region?
DIV is open to projects in any country where USAID provides funds to development efforts. Since there are countries without USAID Missions or those that have Regional Mission coverage, the physical presence of a USAID Mission in that country is not required for a proposal from a particular country to be eligible. For a small number of countries, the application processing timeline can be longer than normal due to special requirements for providing U.S. foreign assistance to operate in that country. Promising applicants from a country with these special requirements will hear from the DIV team regarding the process. 

Q: Does it matter where my organization is headquartered?
No, it does not matter to DIV where your organization is registered or headquartered. You can apply to DIV from anywhere in the world. You do not have to implement the proposed activities in the country in which your organization is registered.

Q: Does my organization have to undergo a financial audit to apply? 
No. In most cases, you do not have to undergo a financial audit to apply, even if you have never received funding from USAID before. However, in some cases, the Agency may require a financial audit before issuing an award. If you move past the initial review stage of our application process, the DIV team will inform you of what is required. 

Q: Do I need a referral or letter of endorsement from a USAID staff member or the USAID Mission(s) relevant to my proposal? 
No. Letters of support from USAID Missions or Bureaus are not required or requested. However, upon award, DIV grantees will be expected to coordinate with USAID Missions and Bureaus as appropriate. The application form does include a field where applicants can note whether a USAID staff member referred the applicant to apply. A USAID staff referral does not guarantee an application’s success. 

Q: Does whether or not my organization has received funding from USAID in the past matter for my eligibility? 
No. You are eligible to apply to DIV regardless of whether you have previously received funding from any part of USAID, including DIV. Note that, if you have received funding from other parts of USAID in the past, DIV may contact the relevant USAID staff member who managed that grant or contract to understand the nature of that work and your performance. Note also that approximately roughly half of DIV awardees report that they have never before received funding from USAID.

Q: Does DIV require matching funds to be eligible for USAID funding?
No, applicants are not required to contribute to project costs. However, applicants are encouraged to leverage other resources for the projects and the type, amount, and source should be described in the application where we ask applicants for their proposed “cost-share”. The cost-share does not need to be other funding; it could be labor hours that are not funded through DIV support or it could be equipment/machinery already owned or donated, which you will use to perform proposed activities.

We ask for this to understand what resources an applicant proposes bringing to the project that will not be financed by DIV grant funding. Our objective is to understand the total value of resources required for the proposed activities so we can understand the full scope of your work and the relevance of DIV funding in relation to other resources.

Application Process

Q: Where do I submit my application? 
All applicants must submit an application via the online application portal, but you may download a Word version of the application to work offline prior to submission. Please review the application instructions and process on our How to Apply page.

Q: When can I submit my application?
DIV accepts applications 365 days a year. There is no deadline for submission. The Annual Program Statement is renewed on an annual basis, subject to availability of funds. The closing date of the APS is not a deadline. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis as they are received.

Q: Does my application have to be in English? 
Yes. Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to review applications submitted in languages other than English. Please note that applications are judged by the content and quality of their proposal, not by English fluency.

Q: Can I submit more than one application at the same time?
Yes. We will accept more than one application at a time from an organization, as long as each application is unique and for a separate innovation. For example, an applicant can submit one application for an energy project and another for a separate agriculture project. However, multiple applications cannot be submitted for the same project. If DIV receives multiple submissions of the same or substantially similar application, we reserve the right to reject the duplicated request.

Q: Can I make updates to my application after submission?
No, you will not be able to update an application once it has been submitted. We highly encourage you to download a Word version of the application to work offline prior to submitting the application online. We understand things may change in the time between submitting an application and moving into review. If your proposal progresses to the due diligence phase of the review process, you will have the opportunity to share any updates or changes with the team.

Q: Will I have to submit a longer “full application” at some point after the first submission?
No, DIV applicants do not have to fill out a longer “full application” after the first submission. As outlined in the Annual Program Statement, if an applicant advances into the due diligence phase, then DIV may request tailored information and materials. DIV may engage with the applicant in a variety of ways, such as: interviews or informational calls, requesting supplementary materials that further outline the technical approach and how it responds to DIV’s criteria, contacting other funders or partners of the applicant, engaging internal USAID or external experts to review the application, and any other information-gathering to fully evaluate the application. Supplementary materials may include an initial budget, financial model, proposed milestones, and implementation plan. DIV may assist the applicant in developing these materials. 

Q: How will I know the status of my application? How can I inquire about the status? 
Confirmation of DIV’s receipt of your submitted application: After submitting your online application, you will receive a confirmation email from DIV with your application number. 

Updates on DIV’s review of your application: You will receive an email when the status of your application changes with any of the following: Submitted, Review in Progress, Diligence, Intent to Award, or Declined. You may check the status of your application at any time by logging into the DIV Portal with the username and password you established during the online application process. If you have trouble logging in, you can contact DIVApplications@usaid.gov to troubleshoot.

Outcome of DIV’s preliminary review of your application: DIV reviews applications through a multi-step process described on our website at www.usaid.gov/div/apply. Once we complete our preliminary review, we may request written answers to questions, request a phone interview, or decline an application. We aim to complete preliminary application reviews and send a response to this initial application within one to three months of submission. 

Decline or “Notice of Intent to Award”: If your application passes the preliminary application review, DIV will advance your application into the due diligence phase. DIV staff will review your materials and determine what additional information is needed for a comprehensive review and evaluation. The due diligence process takes two to five months, depending on a variety of factors, such as the proposal’s technical complexity. DIV may decline an application at any time during the due diligence phase. If your application is declined, you will receive an email with feedback explaining the reasons behind the decision. If your proposal is recommended for funding, then you will receive a “Notice of Intent to Award.” The process to negotiate and finalize the award can take two to four months after receiving the Notice of Intent to Award. 

Q: Will I receive feedback on my proposal if you decline it? Can I re-submit a proposal after it has been declined?
While we would like to provide every applicant with thorough and thoughtful feedback, due to the large number of applications we receive, we are typically only able to provide detailed feedback to applicants that make it beyond the preliminary review phase.

Applicants whose proposals are declined may submit a new application to DIV if the new submission includes significant changes from the previous application. Many applicants resubmit an application to DIV taking into consideration any feedback provided by DIV or significant new developments with the innovation.

Application Contents

Q:  What should I include in my executive summary?
An application executive summary should include a short description of (1) the problem you are addressing, (2) your innovation and how it addresses the problem, and (3) how DIV funding will help you to pilot, test, and/or transition your solution to scale.

Strong examples of executive summaries include:
    

1. As of 2023, almost 700 million people were living on less than $2.15 per person per day. “Graduation Model” programming is a proven multifaceted intervention offering targeted support to “ultra-poor” households to address the multi-dimensional effects of poverty: training on business or other income-generating skills, provision of seed capital, access to financial services, and ongoing mentoring. Village Enterprise will use DIV funding to scale its graduation model to 31,000 households in four districts of Rwanda and integrate it into the Government of Rwanda’s social protection programming.
    
2. In Madagascar, 85 percent of 29 million citizens do not have access to safe sanitation, raising the risk of fecal-borne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, and typhoid. Loowatt has developed a waterless flush, container-based subscription model for affordable, at-home sanitation. With DIV funding, Loowatt will demonstrate the financial viability of its sanitation-as-a-service model for low-income households in Madagascar.

Q: What is a “theory of change”?
A “theory of change” describes the logic and assumptions that show whether and how a project, program, intervention or activity may contribute to real outcomes for people. It tells us what you will do, what will result from your activities, how those results will affect people, and how we know this. For example, your vocational training program may match students with employers. This may result in jobs for those students, which may - in turn - result in sustained income growth for those jobholders. 

The strongest theories of change include evidence or citations to document that the assumptions included in the theory of change are likely to be correct. All applications to DIV should include a clear theory of change that demonstrates why your innovation is likely to result in positive outcomes for people.

Below, we include two simplified, entirely fictional examples:

1. Example Theory of Change for an Agriculture Innovation: If we provide actionable, timely, and accurate weather forecasting information to 130,000 smallholder farmers in East Africa, then these farmers will be 40 percent more likely to plant their crops on days with appropriate soil moisture levels for germination. We base this increase on data from a small pilot study in which we provided weather forecasting information and measured farmer behavior and soil moisture levels (citation). Two studies conducted in other settings have shown that smallholder farmers who plant wheat within soil moisture levels of 3–5 percent water by weight experience on average a 15 percent–25 percent yield improvement compared to farmers who do not, translating to an estimated five percent to ten percent improvement in annual income (include citations). 
    
2. Example Theory of Change for an Education Innovation: Our program trains experienced teachers to serve as peer mentors to all new teachers in their first year of teaching. If mentors are well-trained, then new teachers gain a better understanding of effective teaching practices and feel more confident in their teaching abilities. We have been operating for five years and our surveys have shown that new teachers who receive mentoring through our program are more likely to report feeling better prepared to teach and are more likely to return to teaching in their second year (include a citation). We believe students also benefit from having more confident and prepared teachers. We are requesting funds from DIV to rigorously assess whether our teacher mentoring program improves student test scores.

Funding

Q: What stage and funding amount should I apply for? 
Applicants can apply for funding at any stage. Stages are determined by the maturity of the innovation and proposed activities. The DIV team reserves the right to adjust the stage and funding amount requested during the review process. Please review DIV’s Annual Program Statement and our About DIV page for more information on DIV’s funding stages.

Q: How long is the award period for a DIV grant?
The typical award period for a DIV grant is 36 months; however, DIV may make awards for a maximum of five years in length.

Q: If I receive funding at one stage, once the award is complete, does my innovation automatically enter into a higher funding stage?
No. All applicants, whether or not they are a previous DIV grantee, must complete the application process for any funding stage. DIV is not a pipeline: grantees can also apply and be considered for funding at the same or lower stages as they previously received funding. Applicants do not need to have received funding for an earlier stage from DIV to apply for later-stage funding. 

Q: What can DIV funding be used for?
DIV funds are flexible and can be spent on a broad range of inputs and activities, including personnel. Please see the next question for specific activities for which DIV funding cannot be used.

Q: Are there specific activities for which DIV funding cannot be used or for which funding is more difficult to use? 
Yes, there are a small number of specific activities or costs that USAID cannot fund or can only fund in specific and special circumstances, governed by rules in our ADS. After an application is selected for DIV funding, it moves into the award “negotiation” process to finalize the grant agreement with USAID. During this process, USAID conducts a "cost analysis" to examine preliminary budgets from the applicant to determine compliance with federal regulations. During this process, the DIV team will flag if there are any expenses that USAID is unable to support or those that may require further administrative approvals. The list below outlines three common categories of expenses that may present challenges. 

1. Ineligible Commodities are goods and services that a DIV grantee cannot procure with U.S. Government funding. Specific examples include military equipment, surveillance equipment, commodities or services for support of police or other law enforcement activities, abortion equipment and services, luxury goods, gambling equipment, weather modification equipment, goods or services from ineligible suppliers, including any firms or individuals who do not comply with the requirements in Standard Provision, "Debarment, Suspension and other Responsibility Matters" and Standard Provision, "Preventing Terrorist Financing" for US-based and non-US organizations. 
   These restrictions apply to all sub-agreements under the DIV award but do not apply to commodities or services that the recipient provides with private funds as a part of a cost-sharing requirement or with "program income" generated under the DIV award (typically applicable to for-profit grantees). 
2. Restricted Commodities are goods and services for which additional supplementary approval from USAID is required. Specific examples include: agricultural commodities, motor vehicles, pharmaceuticals, contraceptives and condoms, pesticides, used equipment, and fertilizers.
3. Special Situations may also arise, depending on how the applicant proposes to use DIV funding. Common examples include: 

• Construction is not typically funded by DIV and may require additional review, approval, or restrictions on project activities for environmental reasons.
• Activities or goods that could have an impact on the environment (e.g., pesticides) may require additional approvals or restrictions on the use of funds. Every grant receives an "initial environmental examination” prior to award finalization. If certain activities or goods are determined to have an impact on the environment, then those activities or goods might require further approvals or paperwork or be excluded entirely.
• Activities in certain countries might require further approvals by USAID, which could lead to a longer award finalization process and possibly additional restrictions on how funding can be used. This includes the listed countries for "special notification" of Congress, as identified in the annual Appropriations Act and countries with special security concerns, such as a recent coup d'état. 
• Equipment over $5,000 (e.g., motor vehicles) may necessitate that you provide the DIV team evidence that you have reviewed the options available and selected the best value. 
• Purchase of real property is prohibited under the grant agreements used by DIV. 
• Source and nationality of goods and services may also be stipulated in the award agreement you receive from USAID. One example is the "Fly America Act," which stipulates considerations for how to book program-funded travel through U.S. and non-U.S. air carriers. 

Q: Does DIV have guidance regarding acceptable overhead for our proposed budget? 
No, DIV does not stipulate a maximum overhead rate (indirect costs). We accept applications from any type of organization, which have diverse indirect rates. Applications that are selected for funding based on the merits of the ideas proposed and the project team (as determined by the selection criteria in our Annual Program Statement) will later be subject to a cost analysis by USAID’s assistance team to understand the basis of costs claimed in the application. The purpose of this analysis is to validate and finalize the requested budgetary sum. 

Q: Can DIV funding be used for salary support?
Yes, DIV funds may be spent on personnel. Such costs are allowable.

Q: Are there conditions my organization must meet in order to receive US Government funding?
If an application is recommended for funding by DIV’s Decision Panel, the DIV team will contact you to begin a pre-award risk assessment. This process will identify application- and context-specific steps necessary to receive U.S. foreign assistance funds. One eligibility criterion all applicants share is to be registered in the U.S. Government’s System for Award Management (SAM.gov). 

If you have not registered in SAM.gov before, the process may take several months. You can speak to your diligence team about when you should begin the process. If you are currently registered in SAM.gov, please ensure that your registration remains active. 

Partnering with DIV

Q: Does DIV partner with other parts of USAID?Yes! We partner with other USAID Bureaus and Offices in Washington and Missions around the world during our application review and due diligence processes, and throughout the award period. For example, DIV may work with other parts of the Agency to co-fund or co-manage an award, or to source technical guidance from subject matter experts throughout diligence and during the award period.

Q: Does DIV partner with others outside of USAID? 
Yes, absolutely! DIV leverages a large network of partners in many ways, such as by sourcing ideas, conducting due diligence, evaluating proposals, co-funding grants, supporting the growth and accelerating the impact of our grantees, and sharing lessons learned to support evidence-driven innovation in global development

What if I have a question that wasn’t in the FAQ?
For all other questions, please write to the DIV team at DIV@usaid.gov.