General Grant FAQs
Programming FAQs
Finance and Budget FAQs
Capacity Building Grant
FAQs
| 1. | Can an organization apply for more than one REACH India grant in different geographic areas? |
| Yes, but you must make a separate application for each geographic area in which you are interested in providing services. You cannot submit a single application that proposes to work in more than one geographic area. Apart from Delhi, Jharkhand and Kolkata, REACH India plans to issue requests for proposals to serve the following geographic areas: Chhattisgarh, Northern Karnataka and Mumbai over the next 8 months. So, a single NGO could conceivably apply to be a potential partner NGO in any or all six areas once those requests have been issued. | |
| 2. | Can one organization present more than one proposal under each type of grant? |
| For each geographical area, an organization can present one proposal for each type of grant. | |
| 3. | What is the number of grants to be awarded per region? |
| The grants will be awarded on the basis of quality of the proposed project. Therefore, the number of grants to be awarded per region will vary. The anticipated range for the Delhi region is two to four Direct Service Delivery grants and one to three Capacity Building Support grants (each grant). Each Capacity Building Support NGO will further grant eight to 12 sub-grants to smaller NGOs. | |
| 4. | Does REACH India have funds to support projects after the initial 3 year funding period? |
| Not at this time. | |
| 5. | The grant applications states that you must submit two copies of each proposal and then list the attachments that must accompany each proposal. Does an organization also have to submit two copies of all the required attachments? |
| No, your organization must submit two copies of the proposal, but one copy of each attachment is sufficient. |
| 1. | Will we have to establish baselines prior to the submission of the proposal? |
| No, you will only have to establish baselines if you receive a grant. However, you are expected to present data that establishes the extent of the "need" in the areas you propose to serve. | |
| 2. | Can Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs be considered? |
| Under its mandate REACH India must address the basic educational needs of at-risk children, defined as children (especially girls) up to 14 year of age, who are either out of school or in school but in danger of dropping out. ECD programs with a focus on assuring the transition and retention of children into the formal school system, within the life of the project, may be considered. The link with formal schooling and the potential for transition into formal schooling would be critical to how an ECD proposal would be judged. | |
| 3. | Can REACH India funds be used for providing health inputs, nutritional supplements or school feeding programs? |
| The objectives of REACH India are: enrolment, retention,
transition and completion of schooling of children up to 14 years
of age. All NGO's who receive funds from REACH India will have to
assure concrete, measurable results in one or more of these categories.
If an NGO applicant can directly connect the provision of health inputs,
nutritional supplements or school feeding programs to the attainment
of these results, REACH India may consider financing these inputs. However, we would like to encourage NGOs to link the REACH India project to other initiatives on health, nutrition and feeding that the NGO may already be engaged in, or bring in other donors who focus on these issues. If an NGO decides to request funds for health, nutrition or feeding activities they must clearly explain the link to REACH India objectives namely enrolment, retention, transition and completion. They will also need to clarify that other sources of funding for these activities are not available. |
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| 4. | Will a log-frame be required for the proposal? |
| No, a log-frame is not required for the proposal nor will NGOs receiving grants be required to develop a log-frame. REACH India will be using a process called a Results Framework. NGOs receiving awards will be given technical assistance to develop the Results Framework. | |
| 5. | How will REACH India coordinate with the partners and how will monitoring and evaluation systems operate? |
| All these issues will be clarified with all NGOs receiving grants in the process of developing their Memorandum of Understanding. | |
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6. |
In case no evaluations have been carried out by donors, will the annual report suffice? |
| In lieu of a formal evaluation by a donor, the final project reports and the contact names and addresses would be required. The annual report will, in any case, need to be attached to the completed grant application. |
| 1. | Is there a concept of overall unit cost per child or per center of learning? |
| No, we will be looking at each budget proposal to determine their levels of cost efficiency. | |
| 2. | Is there a stipulation of the number of children to be educated in each unit or under one grantee? |
| No, we will be looking at each budget proposal to determine levels of cost efficiency. | |
| 3. | What provision is made for books, stationery, teaching aids, dress, etc for students? |
| If provision of such items is core to the programme you propose to implement, then they are a part of your operating costs. | |
| 4. | Are NGOs expected to supplement their budget from other sources such as SSA? |
| No, but the provision of match and collaboration would be looked on favourably. The NGO must take care to assure that REACH India funds are not used to replace existing funds or services. | |
| 5. | How do we rectify the difference in our financial year and USAID's financial year in preparing our budget? |
| The start of your budget should be based on when you expect to start implementation of your project. The budget template allows you to begin your budget at any point in a quarterly cycle. Once your project is approved, all financial reports will be done in the following quarters: July - September, October - December, January - March, April - June, with one exception; your first report will be submitted in sync with the above quarterly periods. If the first quarter of your proposal is less than a full quarter, you would report on that partial quarterly period. | |
| 6. | In what currencies should budgets and financial statements be prepared? |
| Your budget should be prepared in INR. The budget templates you have been provided will automatically convert your budget into USD at a rate of INR 43/ 1 USD. This is for our convenience and should not require additional work on your part. All grants awards will be in INR and all financial reports will be done in INR. | |
| 7. | Under operational costs, can there be a break-up under personnel and program/activity costs? |
| Please refer to the revised Structure of Grant Budgets. All salaries for the proposed project must be placed in the Cost Category of Salaries. | |
| 8. | What is the difference between administrative and organizational overhead? |
| Please refer to the revised Structure of Grant Budgets. Overhead includes the costs that the proposed project adds to the organizational infrastructure including the extra burden of work to non-project staff, cost of use and maintenance of office space and other physical infrastructure components such as existing furniture and equipment. | |
| 9. | When would one decide to put an item such as administration cost, rent, equipment/furniture under a direct cost category rather than under Overhead? |
| Please refer to the revised Structure of Grant Budgets. |
| 1. | Is it necessary to include the names of the sub-grantee(s) we intend to work with at the time of the proposal submission? |
| It's not necessary. We expect you to go through a very thoughtful process of selecting your sub-grantees and you are not required to submit names of potential sub-grantees in your grant application. You do need to come to some approximation of the number and size of sub-grantees you think you are capable of working with and submit a budget that reflects those decisions. | |
| 2. | On the basis of what capacity and past experience should an organization consider submitting a Capacity Building Support grant? |
| It is up to each organization to determine their capability and to then develop a proposal that is convincing of that capacity. However, it is not necessary that you have already had the experience of working with smaller NGOs to build their capacity in order to be considered eligible for a Capacity Building support grant. Other kinds of experience and expertise may qualify you as well. | |
| 3. | How will points scored be used in determining grant awards? |
| They will be used as a ranking system. | |
| 4. | How does the Capacity Building Support grant work? |
See the Sub-Grantee
Concept Paper  (71
KB) . |
|
| 5. | Will the smaller NGOs need to have an FCRA number? |
| Definitive information regarding FCRA registration and other such requirements is being presented at the technical assistance workshop with the anticipation that all questions pertaining to legal aspects of the organization's ability to receive foreign funds and banking/auditing regulations will be addressed (if not at the workshop, then via e-mail.) | |
| 6. | What percentage of Capacity Building Support grant funds needs to be passed on as a sub-grant? |
| It is expected that significant amounts of resources received by Capacity Building Support grant recipients will be passed on as sub-grants to smaller NGOs. As a rule of thumb, budgets should allocate no more than 23% of resources to Technical Assistance for capacity building of sub-grantees. The other 77% should address Direct Service Delivery through sub-grants inclusive of administrative support of sub-grant activities. Budgets will be judged on how clearly they demonstrate allocation of these costs. |