The Open Window funds quality impact evaluations of interventions aimed at improving social and economic development in low and middle-income countries. It accepts proposals on any theme, and there are no pre-established funding limits.

Open Window Round 3 is now closed. We have received 366 expressions of interest. All notifications about the result of the expression of interest have been sent. If you have submitted an expression of interest and not received this notification, please check your spam folder. To avoid this happening again in the future, please include the email addresses help@3ieimpact.org, noreply@3ieimpact.org and ow3@3ieimpact.org in your email contacts folder. Only teams whose expression of interest have passed this first screening will be requested to submit a detailed application. Deadline for the submission of the full application was Tuesday August 17. 

The preference is given for:

§ Impact evaluations of large-scale development interventions that have a high probability of influencing policy and include a clear communications strategy

§ Proposals with close partnership with the implementing agency

§ Proposals produced by developing country researchers/evaluators or through a partnership between developed and developing country partnership of research teams

§ Evaluation designs based on the theory of change underlying the programme with evaluation questions addressing the causal chain

Important guidelines to read 3ie Principles of Impact Evaluation and 3ie Impact Evaluation Practice.

For more information, click on Frequently Asked Questions

New Online Grant Application System

Register and log-in to the online application system: Online registration. Applicants will be able to follow the status of their applications throughout the process.

Review Process

Once you've submitted your expression of interest or application, you will receive an automatic message confirming that we have received it. If your expression of interest is accepted, you will be asked to submit a full application. You should expect a decision regarding whether the application has been accepted within three months of receipt of your application.

All applications are reviewed by one internal reviewer and three independent external reviewers. The average scores from these reviews will be used to prepare a shortlist of applications. A panel of policy makers will then review and rank the shortlisted proposals according to its policy relevance and potential policy impact. Final approval of awards is made by the 3ie Board of Commissioners. For further details on the review process, read the 3ie review process overview

Sample proposal from Round 2: Environmental and Socioeconomic Impacts of Mexico's Payments for Ecosystem Services Program

Sample proposal from Round 1: Learning and Growing in the Shadow of HIV/AIDS: A Prospective Randomized Evaluation of the Effects of Escolinhas on Young Children in Mozambique

Round 2 - Applicant perception survey - report summary: to read the main findings, what we do well and areas where we need to improve, click here