To view ALO budget instructions, click here.

Follow the Request for Application (RFA) format! Make sure you include all of the required elements specified in the RFA (i.e., title page, narrative, evaluation plan, activity schedule, budget charts, budget narrative, and USAID Mission Response if required). Applications missing any of these basic elements are reviewed unfavorably.

Study the “Application Evaluation Guidelines” in the RFA. While writing your application, keep in mind the various criteria and sub-criteria the peer reviewers will use to grade your application. Effectively addressing each of these elements ensures a stronger application.

Link partnership goals with USAID goals and the strategic objectives specific to the USAID Mission in the host country. Become familiar with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and its goals: (1) encourage broad-based economic growth and agricultural development; (2) strengthen democracy and good government; (3) build human capacity through education and training; (4) stabilize world population and protect human health; (5) protect the world’s environment for long-term sustainability; and (6) reduce suffering associated with natural or man-made disasters and re-establish conditions necessary for political and/or economic development. USAID is not the appropriate source for funding cultural activities or study abroad. Become familiar with the “strategic objectives” (SOs) of the particular USAID Mission (office) in the country of your partner institution (e.g., Malawi’s SO3: “sustainable increased rural incomes”). Then, make a clear and concise link between what your partnership proposes to do and the development results that the USAID Mission wants to achieve. USAID’s website is: www.usaid.gov.

Think about what will constitute “success” of the partnership award in concrete development terms. Reporting numbers of workshops or training programs – or how participants feel about them – does not go far enough. Indicate what development-related skills or outcomes will result and how these will be measured or known.

Clearly demonstrate mutuality and reciprocity. Make a convincing case that the partnership will indeed be mutually beneficial. That is, clearly state how the proposed project will benefit not only the host country’s institution and local community but also your institution and its local community. Clearly state both parties’ objectives and needs. For example, how does the United States benefit if your institution helps improve water quality monitoring in country X? Reviewers respond better to applications that indicate the proposed collaboration is of keen interest to both institutions and that the ideas have been developed jointly. Letters of support that all read the same, or that say it is fine for College USA to conduct their program activities at their campus, are less convincing.

Give evidence that the application concerns an institutional partnership. The application should reflect an institutional partnership, rather than an activity mainly between one principal U.S. investigator and one principal investigator overseas. An application that appears dependent on one or two people will not be judged as having enough organizational strength and sustainability.

Address sustainability in concrete terms. Explain how you and your partners intend to sustain your collaboration beyond the award period, aside from saying “We plan to look for additional funding.” (e.g., will you leave behind a “legacy” of a trained cadre of local technicians? Will you have made ties with host country industry to ensure employment for recent graduates and/or trainees? Will you have developed distance-learning capacity at your partner institution?)

Include the USAID Mission’s response form. Peer reviewers place tremendous importance on the Mission’s Response as validation (or non-validation) of the proposed project’s relevance to USAID’s development objectives for the host country. Absence of the Mission Response often is viewed unfavorably by peer reviewers. Therefore, communicate early and often with the relevant USAID Mission. Plan ahead and remember that USAID staff are not pleased when they receive a Mission response form a few days before the application deadline. Special Initiatives generally do not require a Mission Response.

Do your homework before contacting the USAID Mission. Find out from the USAID website what the priorities and strategic objectives are for the host country. When querying the Mission, provide a concise paragraph or two that indicates what institutions comprise the partnership, what development objectives the partnership plans to address, what the partners intend to do and how, what will be the specific development results, and what resources the partners will bring to the collaboration. Then invite USAID staff to suggest any ways in which the partnership could better address the Agency’s interests.

Use grammatically correct, clear, and concise English. Peer reviewers are quick to notice spelling errors and unnecessarily long, convoluted sentences. They also do not like sentence fragments and poor punctuation. Consider using an editor or a successful grants writer to review your application before submitting it.

Be creative. Be innovative yet realistic in your approach to international development.

Define your acronyms. Spell out all acronyms the first time they appear in your application. Do not assume that peer reviewers are familiar with all abbreviations, even those commonly known.

Less is more. Do not exceed the 20-page, 12-font, double-spaced limit (excluding the title page, executive summary, and appendices consisting of the activity schedule, budget charts, budget narrative, résumés, letters of support, and the USAID Mission Response when required). If you can effectively present your partnership project in less than 20 pages, feel free to do so.

Make sure you’re applying for an ALO award. Reviewers look unfavorably on applications that appear to be “recycled” from another funding source. If you rewrite an application prepared for another organization, at least perform a global search to replace organization “X” with “ALO.” It is not uncommon for peer reviewers to see applications that were written for another funding group, where “ALO” suddenly drops out of the picture and becomes organization “X.” (Also, remember that we are ALO, not AOL!)

Meet the minimum 25% cost-share. Ensure that the total proposed cost-share of the U.S. institution(s) is at least 25 percent of the requested award amount. For example, if the partnership is requesting $100,000, U.S. institution X could contribute $15,000 and U.S. institution Y (if there is more than a single U.S. institution involved) could contribute $10,000, and that would be acceptable. In the vast majority of cases, however, the proposed total cost share significantly exceeds 25 percent. Partnering international institutions usually contribute some resources, to the extent they are able. Most U.S. institutions reflect this in the application but choose not to report it in their financial reports of cost-share because of the difficulty of verification. Read the RFA carefully, as Special Initiatives sometimes have different minimum cost-share percentages.

Try to convince the peer reviewers that the award would be a good investment. Peer reviewers have an obligation to identify the applications that are most responsive to the stated evaluation criteria; that is, responsive to USAID interests, well conceived, likely to achieve significant development results — hence, a good use of taxpayers’ money.