Through a year-round grant competition, Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) sources proposals for innovations that address international development challenges and improve the lives of people living in poverty in developing countries around the world. DIV provides tiered funding to pilot, test, and transition to scale (i.e., grow to reach the highest number of beneficiaries possible) those innovations that demonstrate evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness, and the potential to scale.
DIV funds four types of grants. Stage 1, Stage 2, and Stage 3 grants follow a tiered approach that aligns the funding amount to the strength of the evidence of impact, cost-effectiveness, and scalability of the proposed innovation. Evidence Generation grants are reserved for rigorous evaluations of already scaled or scaling development solutions that lack sufficient rigorous evidence of impact and cost-effectiveness. More details on each of DIV’s grant types can be found in the “Stages of Financing” section in the solicitation document. Please refer to the glossary at the end of the document for definitions of terms.
DIV takes a portfolio approach to impact, meaning it takes relatively small, high-risk bets on early-stage innovations that may generate varying levels of impact as they are piloted and invests larger amounts of money in later-stage innovations that are better able to demonstrate impact, thereby maximizing the social impact of the overall portfolio. DIV is deliberately open to all kinds of innovations and all forms of innovators, in all sectors and countries in which USAID operates. Ultimately, DIV aims to help transition the best innovations with proven impact to scale to improve the lives of millions of people around the world.
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