How can NGOs develop a quick Proposal Concept Note to apply for Grants to address the COVID-19 impact?

The COVID-19 or Coronavirus crisis has made a tremendous cross-sectoral impact across most of the countries around the world. The entire social, economic and cultural structure is gradually transforming into an unexpected reality. Poor communities have become more vulnerable to the basic issues of livelihood, hunger, housing and shelter.

International and local donor agencies, corporates and governments have announced several new multi-million grant programs across different countries to address not just the health problems but also the overall facets of life that have been affected to COVID-19. You can view a complete list of latest grants and resources to address COVID-19 here.

Like for many others, the current crisis is also a challenging situation for NGOs. Just like businesses, NGOs have been affected by the lockdowns, movement of restriction, difficulties in accessing necessary resources and the fear and panic of the declining donor funding. You can learn how to manage your NGOs in such a crisis here.

More and More Donor Funding now available like never before!

Although the above facts are correct, we have also noticed that donors around the world have committed extraordinary funding support to address COVID-19 and its socio-economic and cultural aspects. Never before in history, these donors have come together to offer such a rapid financing mechanism and commitment to give funding abundantly. For example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $125 million in seed funding in partnership with Wellcome and Mastercard, Elrha’s Call for Proposals for research in COVID-19 response in humanitarian settings, The Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund to provide COVID-19 emergency response, UNESCO’s Sports Challenge against COVID-19 in Africa ), the Inter-American Development Bank’s support to respond against this crisis and many other grant programs.

It is an opportunity for NGOs!

NGOs will now get an opportunity to play an even more influential role in not just combating the disease but also addressing the issues arising out of it. For example, when the poor people end up suffering the most from the impact of COVID-19, it is for the NGOs to help them access essential resources, fight hunger and rebuild their livelihoods. Donors and governments across the world are actively engaging the civil society to provide emergency responses to communities and also prepare them to tackle the after-effects of this crisis.

As NGOs need to apply and submit proposals to seek funding from these donors, we have developed a quick proposal concept note. This proposal concept note can be used as a sample reference to write your application and raise funds successfully from donors. Although different donors may have different application formats, yet they usually cover the following questions.

Project Introduction

You can give a brief introduction to the concept note, including providing the project title that expresses the idea and impact of your project. For example, “Building Awareness to fight the COVID-19 Pandemic“. Most NGOs will not be involved in clinically addressing the Coronavirus problem, but raising awareness, carrying out advocacy, reducing panicking and improving the education-levels of communities can be a critical component for NGOs, and a similar proposal can be developed.

Project Background

A reference to the latest news in the media about COVID-19 will give you enough information about how to come out with a proper project background. Since this is a worldwide phenomenon, everyone from donors to governments can relate to this problem and quickly understand the situation. Since this project seeks to provide awareness and information to communities, the project background needs to reflect upon that.

The current outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) got reported first from Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019. Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is an infectious disease caused by a new virus that had not been previously identified in humans. COVID-19 has been declared as a pandemic by WHO due to the alarming levels of spread and severity. Till date, there is no specific medicine to treat or prevent COVID-19. The outbreak of new coronavirus disease (COVID‑19) is causing respiratory illness worldwide, prompting the WHO to declare the condition as a global pandemic. The virus has spread to more than 150 countries.

The outbreak is already infecting economies and financial markets around the world. While governments try to navigate the fine line between being prepared and setting off panic, the economic costs are growing as countries and communities try to control the spread of the disease. As the world further shuts down in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, NGOs around the globe are stepping up efforts to tackle the problems arising out of this contagion by ensuring continuous livelihood access to the poor communities, provision of necessary resources such as food and shelter (especially for the homeless and migrants), spreading mass awareness on prevention and reducing panicking at the community-level.

Project Goal and Objectives

Make sure that your goal and objectives are related to the problem you mentioned about under the project background and to the activities you wish to implement. For example, in light of the above project background, you can outline your goal and objectives as:

Goal

The ultimate goal of this project is to reduce morbidity and mortality due to Coronavirus (COVID-19) and to interrupt its transmission of this virus.

Objectives

1. Increase community awareness on the prevention and spread of the COVID-19 diseases
2. Reduce panicking and disinformation caused by the spread of the COVID-19 disease
3. Ensuring the supply of basic resources such as food and shelter to the poorest and the needy

Project Strategy and Activities

The next part of the proposal concept note is required to cover the details of your intervention. You can start breaking up each of the objectives into strategic activities that will help you achieve the overall goal.

For example, the objective #1, “Increase community awareness on the prevention and spread of the COVID-19 diseases” will involve activities such as informing the general public about sanitation, social distancing, the practice of respiratory hygiene and other safety precautions that need to be followed to reduce the spread of the Coronavirus. WHO has issued some basic public guidelines for its prevention which can be used to write detail about this strategy.

The objective #2: “Reduce panicking and disinformation caused by the spread of the COVID-19 disease” will also cover spreading correct information to counter myths and unproven medicines such as “drinking potent alcoholic drinks, exposure to high temperatures, or conversely, cold weather can kill the virus” (UN News).

The objective #3: “Ensuring supply for basic resources such as food and shelter to the poorest and the needy” will involve activities such as identifying the needy and poor communities such as migrants and homeless people and arrange food and shelter for them.

Results and Indicators

You can list out the results and the indicators you expect from the above intervention. For example, “a large number of people have now adopted sanitation, social distancing and other safety precautions,” “there is a limited spread of disinformation about Coronavirus” and “a large number of homeless and migrant poor people have access to food and shelter.”