The Biodiversity Alliance?s grant-making interest focuses upon biodiversity protection and conservation, or any other areas directly or indirectly connected to biodiversity protection and conservation, including community development projects that would support biodiversity and that enhance the knowledge of biodiversity for the benefit and sustainability of life on earth.

The field of biodiversity conservation and protection encompasses a wide range of activities from research science to data collection, from interventions at local level, to training, capacity building, awareness raising and information and technology transfer at community level: to the ultimate application and use of project results and experiences, and biodiversity data to inform conservation decisions and policy.

The Biodiversity Alliance grant-making strategy will focus upon select global regions where it is felt biodiversity is at risk and conservation interventions necessary or urgent. The BA has an interest in supporting biodiversity protection and conservation activities that cuts across traditional boundaries, and aims at also benefiting from collaboration among various environmental disciplines. The BA?s grant-making will formulate or consider projects that develop, support, and conform to international standards and guidelines.

The BA has instituted two types of grants.
Collaborative: Where The BA will develop a Project Proposal with emphasis on a specific problem, in a specified country/region/locality, and through advertising on The BA?s website, seek and select an appropriate organization that has been deemed capable of carrying out the project.
Unsolicited: The BA will have a limited number of grants available from time to time, and will consider Project Proposals that fall within the mission and objectives of The BA, from local organizations worldwide

Application Procedure
Requests for funding from the Biodiversity Alliance may be submitted in response to a specific invitation to apply, in the case of collaborative proposals, or as an unsolicited application, through submission of a relevant Project Proposal.

Reviewing and Approving
The BA is committed to a fair process and timely replies to interested parties. After proposal submission, review may require 4-8 weeks and in some cases, a further period of 4-8 weeks may be required to allow for the revision of proposals, whenever that is recommended.
The time required to review each unsolicited proposal submitted will be indicated to applicants upon receipt of proposals.

The Grant-Making Process
The Biodiversity Alliance will typically pursue its grant-making though either a collaborative or unsolicited process.
The BA may work with an applicant organization to modify an original proposal in order to make it stronger and more fundable.
The Executive Board of The BA will make all final funding or declination decisions.
Upon approval for funding by the Board, a grant award letter will be prepared, describing conditions, restrictions, payment terms, and reporting requirements. Returning an executed copy of a grant award letter constitutes an agreement to the terms and conditions of a grant.
Consistent with the terms and conditions of the grant award, organizations will be required to submit periodic written reports to The BA. Payments will only be made after the review and acceptance of reports.

Ongoing monitoring and site visits maybe performed by The BA or The BA?s appointed representatives throughout a grant period.
The BA will work closely with its grantees to adapt reporting, payment amounts, milestones and metrics to the realities of the project and to the challenges and opportunities that may arise during implementation, if any.
At the end of a grant period, a final report will be required from a grantee describing the results of the grant.

Data Sharing and Information Access Policy
The Biodiversity Alliance adopts a policy whereby open access to biodiversity information and knowledge by all stakeholders is considered essential to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. The BA requires that the biodiversity-related outputs of its grants in all forms be openly and freely available in formats that promote maximum re-use.

The BA further requires that grant outputs are made available under the least restrictive licensing possible, and according to creative commons license definitions, recognizing that different information/data outputs are subject to different types of licensing and policies.

The BA?s grant application forms will require that grantees disclose their information/data sharing plans and any relevant licenses or agreements to which the grantee organization or the principal investigator is a party that may affect data sharing.
Grantees may be asked at any time to report on the progress of information/data sharing plans and are expected to apply appropriate evaluation methodology and analytic tools (e.g. website analytics) to provide evidence of successful data sharing.
The primary grantee will be expected to use good faith efforts to ensure that any subcontractors and sub-grantees also comply with this policy.
The BA also recognizes that circumstances may obligate the grantee or may benefit the project if data sharing is restricted in some way. Any exceptions to restrict the use of, access to or delayed access to the information/data must be specifically requested and approved by BA. All progress and final reports should include live URLs as well as access methods for information/databases. The BA will evaluate and base payments upon evidence of fulfilling data sharing plans.

What The BA will not fund
The BA will not fund emergency proposals, or land acquisition, endowments, agricultural projects or general economic development projects, or efforts that directly engage in political activities, lobbying, or influencing legislation.

How to Apply for Funding
Collaborative Grants
Information about The BA?s collaborative grants will be posted on The BA?s website whenever these are available, and applications will only be open to terms and conditions set under each project.

Unsolicited Grants
Proposals that are within the terms and conditions of Grants for unsolicited projects from registered organizations (NGO, CBO etc.) worldwide may be submitted at any time of the year.

Download project proposal form (need to activate that one)