The Global Fund's eighth Round of proposals, to be launched on 1 March 2008, will be particularly well funded; there should be enough money to approve every proposal in which the need is clearly established, the design is good, and the ability to implement is proven. Therefore, CCMs that in the past have had low success rates with some of their Global Fund proposals, or that have tended to "aim low" despite there being a high need, might want to consider submitting a bold proposal in Round 8.

The Global Fund provides, through its website, large amounts of information about proposals that the Fund has approved. But it provides no information about proposals that the Fund has NOT approved. That unfortunately means that the interested visitor to the site cannot find out how often his or her own County Coordinating Mechanism (CCM) has applied for a grant, or how its success rate has compared with that of other CCMs.

The table below seeks to fill that gap. It shows, for each country, and for each of the three diseases, and for each of the seven Rounds since the Fund started, whether the CCM from that country submitted a proposal that was approved (shown as "Appr"), or submitted one that was not approved ("Rej"), or did not submit a proposal at all (blank).

In addition, the table shows the total number of proposals approved and not approved for each CCM, and for each CCM plus disease.

CCMs considering submitting a Round 8 proposal should not delay their planning until the Call for Proposals is issued and the final proposal form and guidelines documents become available on March 1. Instead, if they wish to maximize their chances of success, they should start their planning process now. That planning could include reviewing the table below and deciding which successful proposals by other countries to examine at the Fund's website (www.theglobalfund.org); reviewing the evaluation of the effectiveness of each Global Fund grant that is provided by Aidspan (publisher of GFO) at www.aidspan.org/grants; and reviewing "The Aidspan Guide to Round 7 Applications to the Global Fund", available in English, French and Spanish at www.aidspan.org/guides.

Highlights identified in the analysis include:

• Most successes: The CCMs with the largest numbers of approved proposals were Cambodia and China (11 each), India and Lao PDR (10 each), Rwanda (9), and Uganda (8 each).
• Highest success rates: Of CCMs that have submitted 8 or more proposals, the ones that succeeded with two-thirds or more of them were Lao PDR (91% success rate), Malawi (70%), China (69%), and Tajikistan (67%). (Lao PDR has submitted eleven proposals, of which every single one was successful except for a TB proposal in Round 1.)
• Having a hard time: The CCMs with the largest number of rejected proposals were Pakistan (16), Kenya and Nigeria (15 each), Sudan (13), and Benin, Burkina Faso, and DR Congo (11 each). And of CCMs that have submitted 8 or more proposals, the ones that succeeded with one-quarter or less were Congo Rep. (13% success rate), Comoros and Ecuador (22% each) and Guatemala (23%).
• Having an even harder time: CCMs that have had multiple rejections without yet having an approval for a particular disease, and that are perhaps in need of more or better technical assistance, are Azerbaijan (3 malaria rejections), Cape Verde (3 HIV/AIDS rejections), Congo Rep. (3 malaria rejections), Dominican Republic (5 malaria rejections), and Ecuador (4 malaria rejections).
• Persisting until success: The best examples of CCMs persisting until they succeeded were Chad (which had a malaria proposal approved in Round 7 after having its malaria proposals rejected in five previous Rounds), and Senegal (which had a TB proposal approved in Round 7 after having its TB proposals rejected in five previous Rounds). And CCMs that have had a proposal approved after four previous proposals were rejected for the disease in question were Afghanistan (HIV/AIDS), Bangladesh (Malaria), Bulgaria (TB), Côte d'Ivoire (Malaria), Eritrea (TB), Guatemala (TB), Iran (Malaria), Kenya (HIV/AIDS), Maldives (HIV/AIDS), Paraguay (HIV/AIDS), Sri Lanka (HIV/AIDS), and Zimbabwe (TB).
• Best HIV/AIDS examples: CCMs that have had the most successes with HIV/AIDS proposals (and whose proposals might therefore be worth studying at the Fund's website) are Cambodia (5 approved out of 7), China (4 approved out of the last 5), Lao PDR (all 3 approved) and Peru (all 3 approved).
• Best TB examples: CCMs that have had the most successes with TB proposals are China (all 4 proposals approved), DR Congo (the last 3 proposals all approved), India (4 approved out of 5) and Lao PDR (the last 3 proposals all approved).
• Best malaria examples: CCMs that have had the most successes with malaria proposals are Lao PDR (all 4 proposals approved) and Togo (the last 3 proposals all approved).
• Success rates by disease: Proposals for the three diseases have had broadly similar success rates when considered over all Rounds together - HIV/AIDS proposals had a 43% success rate (192 proposals approved out of 445 submitted); malaria 41% (135 out of 326); and TB 46% (146 out of 316). Within each Round, however, success rates by disease had rather varying success rates.

Notes:

1. A blank cell means that the CCM did not apply for the disease in question in the Round in question.

1. The term "not approved" is more appropriate than the term "rejected", because in most such cases, the Fund encourages applicants to work hard to fix shortcomings and then to submit an improved proposal. But for linguistic simplicity, the term "rejected" has often been used in the analysis above.

1. When a CCM submits a proposal with (say) three "components" (one for each of the three diseases), this is counted above, and by the Fund, as three proposals. On the other hand, if one of these components ends up having more than one Principal Recipient (PR), the Fund will establish one grant per PR; but above, this will still count as just one proposal.

1. Some "upper middle income" countries were eligible to apply to the Fund in the earlier Rounds, but became ineligible in the later Rounds. Some of them may become eligible again in Round 8, because the eligibility rules were changed at the recent board meeting. For such countries, "NA" shown in the table above means that in Round 7, the country in question was not eligible to apply for a Global Fund grant for the disease in question. Eligibility regarding earlier rounds is not shown. Being ineligible in Round 7 does not necessarily mean that the country will be ineligible in Round 8.

1. The table only deals with eligible applications received from CCMs. It does not show "non-CCM" applications (i.e. applications from NGOs etc.), or applications from Sub-CCMs, Regional CCMs, or Regional Organizations. It also does not show applications that were submitted by CCMs which the Secretariat "screened out" because the applications, or the applicants, were in some way ineligible.

1. Components shown as "Other" refer to "HIV/TB" and "Integrated" applications from Rounds 1 to 4, and to "Health Systems Strengthening" applications from Round 5.

1. A small number of applications shown as "Approved" were originally rejected, but were subsequently approved on appeal. And a small number of applications shown as "Rejected" were originally provisionally approved, but were subsequently rejected because various TRP requirements were not met with prior to the planned grant signature (namely: Chad, Round 3, malaria; Iran, Round 3, HIV/AIDS; Kenya, Round 3, TB; North Korea, Round 1, TB, and Round 3, malaria; and Nigeria, Round 2, TB).