Deadline: 16th of November 2012
Open to: Innovators from all around the world with new ideas addressing the challenges of transparency and accountability
Grant size: 10.000 USD
Description
The Global Integrity Innovation Fund is a call for brand-new, half-crazy, never tried before ways of addressing the challenges of transparency and accountability. We’ll invest in 10 to 15 innovative ideas with up to $10,000 each, giving innovators from any country around the world the opportunity to test their ideas. Innovators whose ideas are selected for the final round will be offered a chance to explain the uniqueness of their idea, the strength of their testing model, and their own capability to try it out, through a phone or web interview with the Global Integrity team. Final investment decisions will be made by Global Integrity and will consider both written applications as well as final interviews. Throughout the selection process, we will be posting a brief description of each submitted idea on our website for public discussion.
Objectives
By identifying and investing in innovative ideas in transparency and accountability (T&A), we hope to learn the following:
- What new, overlooked, or unidentified ideas exist that may or may not work in practice
- Which ideas show potential for impact given seed capital for testing
- Which ideas do not show potential for impact after being tested
- What others in the T&A community think based on the results from these experiment
More about the objectives and philosophy of the grant can be found here.
Selection process
The following evaluation criteria will be used to select ideas:
- The idea deals with an issue of corruption, transparency and/or accountability
- The idea addresses a specific, identifiable problem.
- The idea aims to diagnose and/or mitigate the target problem.
- The idea has a clear Theory of Change.
- The idea can be defined as Innovative & New.
- The innovator (and team) is capable of testing his/her (their) idea.
We will also consider the feasibility of the idea to be tested through an assessment of: resources required vs. those available, contextual limitations, and any other relevant factors. For more info about the whole procedure, read this.
Types of ideas needed
- Ideas that are brand new. They have never been tested before.
- Ideas that diagnose or mitigate the challenges of transparency and accountability. They do not have to directly address the issue of corruption, however they must create new information or illuminate existing information, with the goal of holding those responsible to account.
- Ideas that may be in the form of (but are not limited to) a product, service, tool, or method.
- Ideas that may employ technology but are not required to.
- Ideas that are innovative- they offer a different way of approaching the challenge that they aim to tackle
- Ideas that are high-risk because their potential for impact is high, although the chance for success may be low due to uncertainty in practice. If successful, these ideas would be transformative – changing how we see accepted rules or processes and/or how we deal with them. They are not known “solutions” and instead, they require testing to understand if they work at all.
- Ideas that are grounded in a clear theory of change– they address a challenge by 1) stating an ultimate goal; 2) outlining the preconditions to achieving this goal; 3) explaining the activities to be pursued to ensure that these preconditions are met; and 4) articulating the assumptions made to explain hypotheses.
Grant size
There will be investments in 10 to 15 ideas, with up to 10,000 USD per idea.
Application process
Applications must be submitted here. Please note that applications are due on Friday, November 16, 2012 at 5pm EST! Be ready for the possibility of follow-up questions at any point after you submit your application. We will notify you on our decision to take your idea to the next round or not by December 21. Our final announcement of ideas that we are investing in will be in early 2013.
For more information, read the FAQs or email at this address: nicole.anand@globalintegrity.org