Youth Development Fund:

 Guidelines for Proposals

Please read these guidelines before writing your proposal. The information below may save you time and give your proposal a better chance of being funded.

ILIMA TRUST funds rural economic development projects, activities promoting the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for economic and social development with a special emphasis on the needs of the poor in rural and marginalised areas.

Be clear on the objectives. The focus of your proposal should be clearly stated.

Seek simplicity. Our reviewers will find it easier to understand your objectives if you submit a clear and concise proposal.  

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS AND ADVICE

THE POOR

ILIMA TRUST seeks to fund proposals that will ultimately benefit the poor. Describe as explicitly and quantitatively as you can how your proposed project will benefit the poor.

FOCUS :  POVERTY ALLEVIATION

• The major purpose of projects submitted to ILIMA TRUST should be for poverty alleviation or disseminating of ICT technology and/or improving ICT use for social and economic development and poverty reduction. 
• The World Bank Group alone spends more than $1 billion each year for ICT components in projects to enhance social and economic development projects and to enhance the information infrastructure of developing countries. Because of such alternative, more-substantial, funding opportunities, 
• ILIMA TRUST grants should not be sought for add-on to a project or program with other development objectives.

INNOVATION, KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND DISSEMINATION

All proposals must include an information dissemination plan. This should indicate means of dissemination for the knowledge and the lessons learned about ICTs and their applications during the project, and should identify people and organizations to which the dissemination efforts will be directed.

ILIMA TRUST seeks innovation. Projects should not be merely the transfer of an established technology, program, or model to a new site, but creation of something truly original, or at least something new to a large geographic region. (However, ILIMA TRUST does not support research and development (R&D) projects.)

ILIMA TRUST welcomes proposals for projects which:

• conduct pilot studies of application of ICT for development purposes, or which;
• identify, validate and codify best practices in the use of ICT for social and economic development, or which;
• demonstrate new uses of ICT in development-related fields to a defined community of development experts.

For such projects, ILIMA TRUST attaches paramount importance to quantity and quality of the knowledge that is to be created about ICTs and how they may be applied for social and economic development, especially that benefiting the poof. Therefore, ILIMA TRUST will carefully review these proposals to assess the expected importance, accuracy, relevance, and novelty of the knowledge to be created.

ILIMA TRUST also welcomes proposals including activities which:

• build consensus needed for the development of ICT infrastructures and their applications to developing countries,
• promoting the application of ICTs to social and economic development, and/or
• seeking to assure ICTs are used effectively in poverty alleviation.

CAPABILITIES OF PROPONENTS

Proposals should:

• demonstrate that the proponent organization has the managerial capacity to bring the proposed project to a successful conclusion;
• provide a clear implementation plan;
• provide a strong monitoring and evaluation plan, with clearly defined indicators of performance and success;
• discuss how participating organizations and financial partners will coordinate their activities and inputs;
• include a staffing plan that clearly identifies the functions and qualifications of key project personnel. This plan should be backed by curricula vitae of key personnel;

SUSTAINABILITY

Proposals for pilot or demonstration projects must show how the activities to be initiated under ILIMA TRUST funding will be sustained after the end of the ILIMA TRUST grant. Therefore, such proposals should include a financial plan both for the period under ILIMA TRUST grant and for the following period. Generally, the plan should identify costs to be incurred, products (such as services) to be marketed, and the financial support that the activities will receive from internal resources, cash flow, and external resources.

Proposals including conferences and training should address follow-up to assure that the benefits from attending conferences and training will be maximized.

BUDGET

ILIMA TRUST resources are limited as compared with the funding demands made on them. Proposals which use ILIMA TRUST funds efficiently and leverage them with funding from other sources are more likely to be funded.

Justify the budget request. Proponents are encouraged to develop proposals showing two or three program options, identifying potential accomplishments at different funding levels. (For example, identify what activities would be cut from your proposal if faced by a ten percent cut in its budget, and by a twenty percent cut. What impact would those cuts have on likely project accomplishments.)

ILIMA TRUST will usually negotiate a revised budget if a proposal is approved for funding.

It is important that all the contributions from financial partners and participating organizations be shown in the budget. Estimates of the values of in-kind contributions (such as staff, facilities, etc.) must be included in the proposal.

You may update your budget while your project is under review. ILIMA TRUST will increase priority assigned to a proposal if you can increase the leveraging of ILIMA TRUST funds. Contact ILIMA TRUST if other donors are located or if you are able to reduce the budget requested from ILIMA TRUST.

EVALUATION PROCESS

Proposals will be screened by ILIMA TRUST staff. Incomplete proposals, proposals for programs not qualified for ILIMA TRUST grants and other proposals judged not to be competitive are returned to the sender. The remaining proposals will be subject to external peer review.

Proposals judged to be acceptable for funding will be priority ranked according to quality, compliance, complimentarity to the ILIMA TRUST portfolio, and potential contribution to the ILIMA TRUST mission, and funded according to the availability of funds.

ILIMA TRUST will organize an expedited review under special circumstances.

The status of any proposal under evaluation can be determined at any time from the ILIMA TRUST website.

EVALUATION SCHEDULE

Submit your new proposal by May 30, 2006!

All proposals received from November 1, 2005 until May 30, 2006 will be reviewed as a batch. (The next review deadline will be announced in the future.)

It is expected that the results of the review will be announced by Friday, June 2, 2006!

  POINT-BY-POINT GUIDELINES

1. Title

The title of a proposal (which would normally become the title of the project, if funded) should not be longer than 12 words. To keep it short, try not to use wording such as "development of", "study on", or "project for". The title should not be an abstract of your proposal.

2. Date of Proposal

This is self-explanatory. (ILIMA TRUST will assign a number to each proposal incorporating the date on which it is received.)

3. Proposal Summary (maximum 100 words)

This section is important; it will be used to describe your project on the ILIMA TRUST website. State concisely and clearly the problem that your proposal addresses, the objectives of the proposed project and how you plan to achieve them. Do not try to describe issues in detail here; leave that discussion for the body of the proposal (section 10).

4. Funding

"ILIMA TRUST funding" is self-explanatory. The "Total proposed project cost" is the total cost of the project including funding requested from ILIMA TRUST. As indicated above, financial partnership is strongly encouraged; ILIMA TRUST should not be the only source of funding.

5. Proponent contact information

This is contact information for the institution that would receive the grant if the project is funded. Provide complete contact information, including the name of the responsible individual, the name of the proponent organization, unit within that organization, mail address(es), email address(es), phone number(s) and fax number(s).

6. Participating Organizations

This term refers to organizations that will participate in the project, working with the ILIMA TRUST grantee. Include partners carrying out portions of the project activities, and organizations that would contribute to the project with in-kind services (office space, secondement of personnel…), as well as financial partners that would co-finance the project. Do not list the proponent organization as a "participating organization".

7. Category

Education: This category is for proposals promoting the applications of ICTs to enhance education and/or the quality, efficiency or coverage of educational services.

Health: This category is for proposals promoting the applications of ICTs to improve health and/or health services.

Agriculture and Rural Development: This category is for proposals promoting the applications of ICTs to enhance agricultural productivity and/or to provide agricultural services and/or to foster socioeconomic development of rural communities.

Environment: This category is for proposals in which ICTs are applied to environmental monitoring and services, and/or to promote improved management of natural resources and/or protection of the environment.

8. Grantee organization type

Self-explanatory.

9. Geographic Location

If the proposed project included activities in two or three specific countries, list them all. If the proposed project activities serve or involve many countries, a region such as Africa or Latin America , or are global in scope, identify it as belonging to the second category heading.

10. Body of the proposal

The body of your proposal generally should not be longer than 20 pages.

You should give here a rationale for the proposed project, and describe its activities in detail. You should tell ILIMA TRUST what specific problem is the focus of your project, and how that problem has been treated in the past. You should make clear why your proposed project would make a difference, how you would develop upon what has already been accomplished and how your project would differ from other activities. You should explain how the project would be carried out (please describe here the project equipment, material, and personnel), what would be the tasks, what approach you would use, when the work would begin and when it would end. In the budget section you will also present and justify a detailed cost breakdown for the entire project, and for the specific resources sought from ILIMA TRUST.

Each section for the Body of the Proposal is explained in detail below.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

I. Overall Goal of the project: This should be no more than one sentence describing the most general goal of the project. (Examples: "Improving the use of information and communications technologies in health service delivery in Africa ", or "Strengthening Internet infrastructure in Central American", or "Improving developing country policies promoting E-commerce"..)

II. Objectives: the specific direct results sought by the project in furtherance of its overall goal. (For example: "Identifying and documenting best practices in the use of the Internet in secondary schools, and disseminating that information to the African education community" or "Support for participation of xx developing country telecommunications policy officials in planning for regulatory reform in conjunction with the ITU regulatory forum".)

III. Activities and Deliverables: This section should be the most detailed and thorough. It is the main part of the proposal description. What activities would you carry out? What approaches do you plan to use for each activity? What are the inputs that you would need for each activity?

Those implementing a project will be held accountable for achieving specific ends or outputs. These ends or outputs will be termed "deliverables" in the proposal and the grant. The "deliverables" generally mark the completion of specific project activities. Quarterly and final reports must specify how many of the "deliverables" have been completed or achieved. 

The proposal should:  

1) Clearly describe an appropriate set of deliverables of the project (ex. "distance education program implemented", "website constructed and available on-line", 'information services network developed and operational").

2) Develop an action plan for accomplishing the deliverables. It can be a work plan, a calendar, or a GANTT chart (examples of activities needed to accomplish a deliverable might be: "design and conduct training", "design and Develop on-line course contents", "Procure equipment").

For projects in which sustainability is a concern, describe how the project will be sustainable after ILIMA TRUST funding is completed (how the project continuation will support itself?). In the case of conferences, training or consensus building activities, describe how they will be followed up.

IV. Staffing: Discuss deployment of existing staff and any new hiring of staff. Include consultants and their functions in the discussion. Identify all key personnel (those whose services are critical to successful completion of the project), and describe how the services of these key personnel will be assured. Please provide a summary table summarizing gender and citizenship of project personnel. If key staff members have worked on other ILIMA TRUST financed projects please identify the person, project and his/her role in that project.

V. Administration: Discuss succinctly the management issues critical to successful project implementation, and how they will be addressed. Issues important in many ILIMA TRUST projects include:

• Financial management (e.g. to assure that appropriate funds will be available for all activities in a timely fashion, that expenditures will be controlled and tracked, and that the required final project financial audit will be performed in a timely and satisfactory manner);
• Logistics management (e.g. to assure that required hardware and software are procured in a timely fashion, and are properly maintained);
• Organizational strategies (e.g. to assure that possible changes in participating organizations do not unduly delay projects);
• Competitive processes (e.g. to assure of open and transparent, merit-based selection of contractors, sub-grantees, or participants in conferences);
• Communications (e.g. to disseminate the lessons learned from the project through publications, to assure timely submission of quarterly and final project reports to ILIMA TRUST, and to provide copies of all project-related publications to ILIMA TRUST);
• Product Maintenance (e.g. maintenance of public products of the project such as data bases and web sites).

VI. Budget: (See specific budget guidelines attached)

VII. Evaluation Plan: Explain how you are going to evaluate the project, emphasizing four major areas of inquiry:

1) Program effectiveness;

2) Inputs and partnerships;

3) Context and implementation;

4) Output and impact.

Basically, describe how you will know if you have achieved your desired impacts? Explain what evaluation methods you will use. What information will you gather to determine how well you have achieved the desired outcome?

Describe both the "formative evaluation" used to monitor progress during the implementation of the project and the "final evaluation" to determine how well the project succeeded.

VIII. Time Line: please give a general time-table for the entire project, and specify the duration of each project activity.

IX. . Appendices (as required):

X. Proponent capability statement: Describe your organization and its experience in similar projects. Please provide (if applicable) the latest annual report from your organization. Attach here the CV’s of key personnel who would work on the project.

XI. Previous ILIMA TRUST grants: Identify all previous grants that your organization or your partners have received from ILIMA TRUST, and briefly describe the status and accomplishments of each.

11. Intellectual Property:

Identify any expected products of the proposed ILIMA TRUST grant for which intellectual property rights (such as copyrights, patents, trademarks, etc.) are available.

If there are any such products expected, they might be placed in public domain or might be protected.

• Discuss briefly which course of action you believe would maximize the benefits for social and economic development (and especially by the poor) to be realized from the ILIMA TRUST funding?
• If you believe intellectual property rights should be obtained, discuss briefly how they should be managed (licensing, sharing among partners, distributing of royalties, etc.) in order to achieve ILIMA TRUST’s purposes?

By submitting this proposal, proponents acknowledge that items one through nine of the proposal will be placed in public domain, as will the quarterly, annual and final reports submitted to ILIMA TRUST if the proposal is funded.

BUDGET GUIDELINES:

Resources required for the Proposed Project. Provide separate columns for expenses funded by ILIMA TRUST and those funded from other sources.

You should prepare an activity budget, specifying each activity that you plan to carry out, and the budget required for that activity. Thus if you plan to develop a manual, hold three training courses, and provide equipment for a Resource Centre, you should define the costs for each of these activities. Please also provide a budget line item for the audit of the Proposed Project (as required by ILIMA TRUST grant agreements).

For example:

	Specific Costs (ZAR)				Other# In-kind support (ZAR est.)		Total	Of Which
Item	Personnel	Materials and Equipment	Travel	Other			ILIMA TRUST funding	Other* funding
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3
Audit
Overhead##

#In-kind contributions should be described in notes to the budget table if their value can not be estimated and included in the financial budget.

* "Other funding" refers to contributors other than ILIMA TRUST. Please note that all the above figures for "other funding" should be backed by written statements.

## Overhead support requested from ILIMA TRUST should not exceed ten percent of the direct costs requested from ILIMA TRUST.

An AUDIT of your project by an independent audit firm will be required. Your budget should include funding for this audit.

Generally, requests for ILIMA TRUST funding should be less than R250,000 per project. As noted above, requests for ILIMA TRUST contribution of more than R250,000 require special approval by the Donors’ Committee, require more time to process, and are seldom successful.