The United States Agency for International Development’s open innovation program has received a $45 million gift from grant-making organization Open Philanthropy to help address development challenges across the world.
With the support from Open Philanthropy, USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures will launch a Stage 4 grants initiative to advance programs in its portfolio aimed at enabling change in burgeoning communities, the agency said Thursday.
DIV provides grant funding in three-tiered stages to innovators and researchers to transform new ideas into efficient community development technologies.
The pilot stage offers up to $200,000 to support innovations that are in early development stages and require testing. It is followed by the test and position for scale phase that provides up to $1.5 million to innovators to test their products for market viability.
The third stage awards up to $15 million in funding to take proven technologies to scale in new geographies or contexts.
