The Global Fund has issued its Sixth Call for Proposals, as agreed by the board late last month. The application form and support documentation is available in six languages at www.theglobalfund.org/en/apply/call6.

All proposals submitted by the closing date of 3 August 2006 will be reviewed by the Secretariat to ensure that they meet the eligibility criteria. Eligible proposals will then be forwarded to the Technical Review Panel (TRP) for consideration. The TRP will make recommendations to the Global Fund Board, which will make its decisions at its 1-3 November board meeting.

When the TRP members review the proposals, they will do so in their personal capacities - they must not share the information with or accept any instructions from their employers or their national governments.

Once the TRP has assessed each proposal, it will assign it a rating in one of the following categories:

• Recommended (Category 1): Proposal is recommended for approval.

• Recommended (Category 2): Proposal is recommended for approval, provided that the applicant responds promptly to a number of requests by the TRP for clarification or adjustment. (This might be divided into Categories 2A and 2B.)

• Not Recommended (Category 3): Proposal is not recommended in its present form, but applicant is encouraged to submit a proposal in a future round following major revision.

• Not Recommended (Category 4): Proposal is rejected

In allocating each proposal to one of the above categories, the TRP will take into consideration only technical factors, such as whether the project described in the proposal is technically sound, whether it is one that the specified organization(s) are capable of implementing, and whether it represents good use of the money. The TRP is required to ignore the question of whether it believes the Global Fund has enough money to pay for all of the proposals that it is recommending. If the TRP recommends more proposals than the Fund has money to finance, it will be for the Board to deal with the problem.

Once a proposal is approved by the board, the Secretariat will enter into a lengthy and complex process of: (a) ensuring that the applicant answers, to the satisfaction of the TRP, any questions that the TRP asked regarding the proposal; (b) assessing the ability of the proposed Principal Recipient (PR) to perform the role that the proposal assigns to it; and (c) negotiating grant agreement(s) with the PR. It is only after this multi-month process that the first cash disbursement will be sent. Thus, although proposals have to be submitted by 3 August 2006, it is unlikely that the first funding will be sent for successful proposals before the middle of 2007.