With the goal of improving value for money, the Global Fund is increasing pressure on CCMs and grant recipients to standardize unit costs for grant proposals, renewals, and CCM Expanded Budgets. Due essentially to the lack of coordination among stakeholders very few countries have managed to harmonize costs for similar activities. This situation often results in dramatic delays in grant signatures, disbursements, and program implementation.
Last summer, the Leadership Management, and Sustainability Program (USAID-funded) contracted with zeGOgroup to provide technical support to the CCM Côte d’Ivoire. As part of this assignment, zeGOgroup was tasked to assist the CCM, Principal Recipients (PRs), and other stakeholders in developing a methodology for standardizing unit costs for Global Fund proposals, grants, and the CCM Expended Budget.
A first workshop was held in Abidjan, on July 10, 2012 after initial individual meetings with all PRs in Côte d’Ivoire, as well as key stakeholders, to ensure wide buy-in and participation.
During a subsequent visit in August, another workshop co-facilitated by zeGOgroup and Global Challenge Corporation – CI was held to review progress to date and continue the exercise on cost standardization. Discrepancies across organizations and solutions were discussed in-depth and resulted in a unanimous decision to minimize costs as much as possible and to share information and/or help each other.
Preliminary discussions with all stakeholders and facilitation - rather than direct provision of technical expertise - were key in achieving ownership and success of this first attempt to standardize important activity and budget items of Global Fund programs across all 3 diseases. There is still a lot to be done before achieving standardization of all budget items and unit costs of Global Fund programs, but the approach showed to be effective and participants agreed to continue this work, with the support of the CCM. A national-level workshop with government and other pertinent partners (including non-GF partners) to further test and validate the approach and its results is scheduled to take place in the next few months.