A follow-on project to Grant Management Solutions (GMS) has been awarded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with support from the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, for a period of three years, with the possibility of an extension for up to two additional years. The project’s budget ceiling is $99.9 million. The announcement of the project renewal was made on 16 October by Management Sciences for Health (MSH), which manages the project.

In its first five years of existence, GMS provided short-term technical support to country coordinating mechanisms and principal recipients (PRs) in 150 countries (see GFO article).  In its second term, GMS will continue these activities and take on the following additional activities:

• strengthening 12 small regional consulting organisations to provide high quality technical assistance to PRs using the technical support funds in the grant budgets; and
• building the capacity of individual consultants through a formal consultant certification process combining training, team assignments, technical supervision and continuing education.

In addition, GMS will continue to “invent, perfect and disseminate” tools, effective methodologies, and training through distance learning and other pathways. This will include collaborating with other technical agencies who were interested in GMS-style training or tools to adapt GMS curricula or materials to their own capacity building process.

GMS works on the basis of a series of partnerships. The project is led my MSH and its six major partners: Abt Associates, Futures Group, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, MIDEGO, Pact and Training Resources Group, Inc.

The list of partners in the new GMS is 25, up from six in the first GMS. In the first year of the second term, GMS will add six regional partners: ALMACO Management Consultants, in Kenya; Curatio International Foundation, in Georgia; OASYS Financial & Management Services, in Senegal; Q Partnership, in Zimbabwe; Technical Assistance Inc., in Bangladesh; and Sanigest Internacional, in Costa Rica.

Another six regional partners will be added in the second year.

When the U.S. Congress approved funding for the Global Fund, it set aside 5% of the funding for programmes to provide Global Fund-related technical support. The GMS project is funded through this appropriation.

Information for this article was taken from a news release available on the GMS website. See the GMS website for more information, including technical support application forms. To request technical support, contact Emily J. Hughes, Contract Officers Representative, USAID, or Christy Wahle, TSAP Chairperson, OGAC.

This article was modified on 25 October 2012 to correct several minor errors.