Deadline: 27th July 2023 | Call for Applications: Transform East Africa Fund (grants ranging from £100,000 to $300,000)
In order to make the greatest impact on the greatest number of people, About Transform wants to connect with as many businesses as they can that have innovations in the fields of health, waste, water, and sanitation, environment, inclusive economy, and boosting living standards.
This time, they want as many companies as they can choose from so that businesses in rural and underserved areas would have an equal opportunity to compete for grant financing.
Rewards
The top 10 high-impact businesses will get grants ranging from £100,000 to $300,000
Judging standards
Criteria
- The following requirements must be satisfied by projects in order for TRANSFORM to support them.
- In one of the six areas that TRANSFORM finances, clearly have the potential to improve the lives of low-income people.
- A few or all of these key areas may be the focus of the East Africa Selection Panel. Projects must connect back to at least one of the selected impact regions.
- Take tackle environmental and social issues in a genuinely unique manner.
- Projects must incorporate a novel technology, business strategy, or methodology; this may entail adapting a tried-and-true commercial strategy for a different market.
Possess the potential to operate in fields where Unilever, as the implementing partner, has experience and the capacity to offer value to project development.
- Projects must explicitly relate to Unilever East Africa.
- Will produce global public goods by advancing public understanding or research.
- We must openly share the program’s lessons learned.
- The social entity will become the owner of any intellectual property created by the projects.
- oThis intellectual property cannot be used only by Unilever, the FCDO, or EY.
- Have a strategy in place to develop a market-based solution that could achieve operational sustainability.
A social enterprise, not an NGO, must make the application.
Possess the capacity to grow in scope
In order to obtain additional funding, there must be a clear path for the proposed project to be economically feasible at scale and with testable assumptions.
The business must be able to deliver the project successfully and absorb the funding and in-kind assistance received throughout the project.
All TRANSFORM-funded programs must show additionality; in other words, we cannot use TRANSFORM funds to support initiatives that Unilever would have supported independently. Funds from the TRANSFORM program must only be given to third parties; Unilever is not permitted to use them for internal projects.
Additionally, projects must show that they meet at least one of the following criteria:
- Projects that are primarily aimed at low-income consumers.
- Applications of projects in new geographical areas.
- Projects that suffer from the first mover disadvantage.
- Projects have payback periods longer than typical business cases for commercial enterprises.
- Projects with high risk characteristic
To Apply and for more information, Apply Here
