Agency’s background, profile, ownership and organizational structure;
	Details of principal officers as reflected in their short CVs;
	Proof of valid registration for a minimum period of three years under any recognized act of the government (government departments/ subsidiaries, other parastatal agencies are exempted);
	Direct experience the agency has on health issues inclusive of maternal, reproductive and child health and other related project areas;
	Annual turn over of at least Rs 5 lacs from recognized funding agencies

Internal processing

Applications received on or before the prescribed deadline will be considered for further screening. Applications will be formally acknowledged by the SIFPSA. Screening of applications received will be done using set criteria.

The programme management and fund handling capacity of the agency will be checked and verified.

Screening committee

The short-listing of the applications from the list supplied by the Private sector division will be done by a screening committee at SIFPSA. This committee will short list the applications from the above list after going through the information provided by the agency. Those who have fulfilled all the criteria will thus be in the short listed category.

Request for Assistance (RFA)

All those agencies who have been short listed by above committee will be supplied with a Request for Assistance document. This document will spell out in detail the following components viz. grant proposal format, selection criteria, evaluation criteria, program description, among others.

Bidders conference

The agencies who are supplied with RFAs will be given sufficient time to go through the document and will be called for a bidders conference subsequently. The basic objective of this conference is to give an opportunity to the agencies to seek clarifications on any aspect of the RFA, which is not clear to them from the document circulated. After this conference no applicant will be permitted to seek any further information related to RFA. Absentees will also not be entertained once they miss the bidders conference.

Review of project proposals

After the bidders conference, the agencies will submit detailed project proposals covering both technical and financial components sought in the RFA. The proposals will be reviewed by a Proposal Review Panel (PRP).

Field appraisal (FA)

A field appraisal will be done by the Program Officer along with a finance staff for all those agencies who have been found suitable by the PRP. Agencies found suitable in FA shall be considered for further actions.

Report from District Administration

The District Administration will then be asked to share their opinion on an already existing format of SIFPSA regarding the suitability or otherwise of those agencies whose projects have been found suitable by the PRP.

Negotiations

After receiving the feedback from the District Administration alongwith the approved FA report, agencies will be called for further negotiations so as to ensure greatest value at the lowest cost (best results). The aim at this stage is to fine tune the document further to make it most cost effective.

Project Appraisal Committee (PAC) Recommendation

All those proposals approved by ED, SIFPSA will be presented before the Project Appraisal Committee for its recommendation. After incorporating comments by the members of the PAC, individual projects will be put up before the competent authorities for approval/ sanction of the projects for signing of agreement on vetted formats.

Signing of agreement and project implementation

Once the projects are approved / sanctioned by the competent authority, a formal agreement will be entered into between the Agency and SIFPSA which will also contain the following documents viz. final project proposal along with budget and the terms and conditions. The first installment of funds will be released at the time of signing of agreement signaling the start of the project.