USAID Forward &Capacity Building Lessons from USAID/Malawi Beth Deutsch AIDS Turning the Tide Together

USAID Forward Key Implementation and Procurement Reform Areas (IPRs) IPR 1: Building Country Ownership and Capacities – Public Financial Risk Management Assessments – Government to Government Funding IPR2: Strengthen Local CSO and Private Sector Capacity – Requires local organizations to receive funds directly from USAID and not through sub grant mechanisms – Building capacity for local organizations to be independent and not just to depend on USAID funding – Diversifying the type of procurement mechanisms to facilitate increased partnerships with local organizations

USAID Forward Definition What is a Local organization? Organized under the laws of the recipient country Have its principal place of business in the recipient country Be majority owned by individuals who are citizens or lawful permanent residents of the recipient country Be managed by a governing body, the majority of whom are citizens or lawful permanent residents of a recipient country Not be controlled by a foreign entity or by an individual or individuals who are not citizens or permanent residents of the recipient country Government controlled and government owned organizations in which the recipient government owns a majority interest or in which the majority of a governing body are government employees, are included in the above definition of local organization

Responding to USAID/Forward Mapping all current local sub-partners (under primes) and Identifying those who meet the definition as potential bidders Planning for and designing new grants/agreements to directly fund potential local organizations Planning for current primes and their sub relationships to be more focused on capacity building and preparing to transition to sub partners more responsibility of project implementation within existing programs Building direct capacity: Mission’s Financial Management Office (FMO) providing organizational development trainings to sub - partners

PACT: TA and Sub-Granting Model International prime’s role was to provide technical and organizational capacity building support to 25 local organizations Focused on 5 technical areas under PEPFAR (HTC, PMTCT, HBC, sexual prevention, youth programming) Service delivery local organizations solicited locally : support helped them to deliver better services, and manage resources more effectively. Aim is to prepare local organizations to respond to proposal requests directly

AIDSTAR II - TA only Model No sub-grants provided Platform of tailor-made TA to local organizations for health advocacy and organizational development Demand driven: Local APS competed where organizations apply and request specific TA from AIDSTAR II 14 organizations currently supported Milestones are specific to each organization

GDA’s – Breaking Away from the Norm GDA = Global Development Alliance is a type of cooperative agreement to strengthen public-private partnerships. Objective is to have new, different and more partners on board GDAs require a 1:1 resource match which allows USAID to leverage funds. GDAs have linked USAID to international NGOs transitioning into locally managed entities USAID 9 GDA’s: Banja La Mtsogolo, LMRTF, Feed the Children, Partners in Hope, Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance, Dignitas International, Baylor College of Medicine, CRS and Save the Children

The APS Model- A more Direct Route APS = Annual Program Statement Directly funding local organizations through locally competed grants and cooperative agreements Mission is planning to announce new APS awards to explore possibility of increasing local primes Direct OD capacity building will be offered by the Mission to support organizations in – M&E – Financial Management

Lessons To Date – Local Organization Limited capacity of local organizations – Fund absorption capacity: Local organizations tend to be smaller and may not be able to absorb large dollar values. Geographic limitations and resulting fragmentation of programs due to smaller nature of local organizations – Several awards may have to be made for coverage beyond one district and technical area – Fragmentation could potentially impede USAID efforts for greater integration of technical areas and funding Vulnerabilities of local organizations – Vicious cycle with local staff trained, who then go out to seek better paid jobs with more financial benefit with training received – Local organizations are vulnerable to funding environment: and so their technical focus changes or continuously expands as they try to follow the money

Lessons To Date – Mission Management burden at Mission – Absorptive capacity and geographic limits means more smaller awards, requiring increased management/oversight capacity by USAID Financial risks of local organizations – need more oversight to manage processes of project implementation concurrently with capacity building efforts Measurement of impact of capacity building efforts – Capacity building assessment tools tend to be self reported – Need objective measures that demonstrate real change For more information, see