Open question and answer sessions for BID 2025 Latin America & the Caribbean and Pacific Region
BID: Biodiversity Information for Development programme
2025 BID call for proposals: Latin America & the Caribbean
2025 BID call for proposals: Pacific
Disclaimer:
The call text remains the official reference for all information provided. The questions and answers shared here are intended solely as supplementary clarifications based on inquiries received during the live Q&A sessions. For any further questions, please feel free to post them on the forum here or reach out directly to BID@gbif.org .
Clarifications on proposal submission limits, project activities, and related queries
Q: Approximately how many projects are funded in each call?
A: The allocation of funding depends on the quality of the proposals submitted. We have distributed the available funds across regions according to the number of eligible countries in each.
Q: How many proposals an organization can submit for both types of grants. Is there a limit?
A: There is no limit on how many proposals you can submit.
Q: Can one institution apply in two different proposals? How many projects can a National Node endorse?
A: Yes, you may participate in two different proposals. There is no strict limit on the number of projects a node can endorse. A node’s endorsement indicates acknowledgment of the project’s submission.
Q: Is it necessary to list as activities of the projects on the GBIF Grants Portal:
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the GBIF data mobilization course?
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the midterm and final reports?
A: The drafting of the midterm and final reports and attendance to the GBIF data mobilization course will be mandatory for all selected projects.
Q: Do the multi-institutional applications have more opportunities to get the grants?
A: The call states that "A selection panel composed of external experts assembled by GBIF will evaluate the proposals based on the reviewers’ scores and comments, the balance of geographic, thematic and grant types representation, the balance of projects that build on the activities of previous grantees and those that are led by new institutions, and the potential for similar proposals to combine into a single submission ensuring the best overall impact of the annual funding round." This means that ideally, we will look at funding approximately the same number of projects under each grant type.
Q: Can startup institutions, without existing data, apply for this grant?
A: The focus of the BID programme is on mobilizing existing data and building capacity. Project teams involve different roles, including a lead institution and partner institutions participating in the proposed activities. An institution does not need to hold existing biodiversity data to lead a BID project. However, it is then strongly recommended that the project includes partner institutions that do possess such data. Since the collection of new data is not eligible for funding under the BID programme, leading a project while simultaneously identifying data sources would be challenging.
Clarifications on roles, eligibility, and requirements for partners
Q: At the concept note stage, is it necessary to have confirmation of participation from the partner (s)?
A: No, it is not required to have all your partners confirmed at the concept note stage.
However, projects that are invited to submit a Full Proposal will be required to have all listed partners confirmed before submission. At that stage, written confirmation from each partner, using a specific template (provided at full proposal stage), will also be requested.
Q : “Training data holders on best-practice data mobilization and management strategies" - is this only for public partners or NGO partners as well?
A: We do not differentiate between types of partner organizations. However, the lead organization must have a legal status that allows it to sign contracts and manage an institutional bank account to receive funds. Please note that the BID programme cannot award grants to private individuals or transfer funds to personal bank accounts.
Q: Where can we find the list of partner countries or organizations that are already participating in GBIF? In Peru, we’ve only identified the Ministry of Environment.
A: You can find the GBIF contacts from Peru here: Peru and data publishing institutions from Peru: Search
Q: Can directors of museums associated with a university and their professors act as representatives of the legal entities to submit proposals?
A: The grant will be awarded to an institution, and not to individuals. If the director is authorized and can sign the contract on behalf of the institution, then the answer is yes.
Q : Could you please confirm whether, for multi-institutional grants, all participating institutions can be from the same eligible country?
A: The partner institutions may be in the same country as the lead organization or in another eligible country within the region.
Q: I have a question regarding the associated institutions. What would happen if one of them isn’t on the GBIF list?
A : In order to participate in the BID programme, you do not need to be a GBIF Participant or have already registered as a data publishing institution within GBIF.
Q: For multi-institutional projects, it is necessary to have a letter of acceptance from the national node, e.g. from the “SIB Colombia”?
A: At the concept note stage this is an optional document, however the letter of endorsement from the node will be a mandatory document at the full proposal stage and we will provide invited proposals with specific template for this.
Clarifications on budget structure, costs, and funding rules
Q: Will there be extensions for the projects or second parts with the option to apply to additional budgeting?
A: This is not planned at this stage.
Q: Is there a budget template?
A: . We are only requesting an estimation of the cost of each activity at the concept note stage. Applicants invited to submit a full proposal will be required to provide a detailed budget as part of the full proposal form. When setting up the project budget, all costs associated with all the activities and deliverables should be identified and included. It is important that the cost estimates are properly valued, and that the budget is realistic. The costs need to be clearly identified in the budget and the grantee must explain how they came to the amount. The costs must cover price and volume, such as unit price and volume of things The application must be submitted online through our GBIF Grants portal.
Q: Are administrative expenses, such as banking charges, eligible?
A: Unfortunately, banking fees are considered as an ineligible cost.
Q: Is there a minimum duration for the financing? Can the project length be 12 months or less? Is there a minimum length for the projects?
A: There is no minimum duration for the project, each project may determine its own pace of activities. However, the maximum implementation period is limited to 24 months.
Q: In the GBIF portal for the concept note submission, in the budget, activities, and deliverables section, it is not possible to fill in the information. Does this mean that this section is only completed if the proposal moves to phase 2?
A: .You should be able to complete the “Activities and deliverables” section of the form. Please note that you must first select the type of grant you are applying for in the “Project overview” section. Since the priority areas are slightly different for each grant type, this section has been customized accordingly. Once you select the BID grant type you are interested in, the “+” icon should appear in the “Activities and deliverables” section.
In this section, you will need to provide the list of project activities, associated impact/deliverables and an estimation of the cost for each activity. A budget will then be automatically calculated based on the information provided and displayed in the “Budget” section.
Please note that applicants invited to submit a full proposal will be required to provide a detailed budget as part of the full proposal form.
Q: What are the budget items that are allowed for each grant?
A: The costs must be described per activity and broken down into the expense type as defined by GBIF. For the sake of simplicity, the expense types will be restricted to 5 categories:
Salary
Travel
IT; including equipment, services or licences
Consumables
Conference and logistics
There is a limit on the IT services and equipment, depending on the grant: max. 3,000 EUR for the Institutional, and max 6,000 EUR for the Multi-institutional grant.
Q: BID programme funds may be used to cover “staff time, travel, and costs”. Is this considered overhead?
A: BID funds can be used to cover staff time (salary) and travel, and these are eligible costs.
Q: Can overhead be included?
A: The answer is no. Overhead costs – costs that cannot be directly attributed to the activities of the project - are considered to be ineligible.
Q: Is GBIF open to transfer the money to Universities as donations? In this way no baking fees are need.
A: Unfortunately, the answer is no.
Q: Do the co-financing contributions (monetary or in-kind) need to be distributed across the entire proposal period, or can they cover specific activities? Can expenses related to inter-institutional arrangements be considered as co-financing?
A: We do not have specific requirements on the co-funding. It is up to the applicant how the co-funding will be distributed. Yes, the contributions in-kind can fall under the co-funding category.
Q: The proposal could consider the payments to undergraduate/graduate students able to help in different phases of data processing?
A: Yes, this would be an eligible cost. However, the grant will be paid to the lead institution, which will be responsible for covering the expenses listed in the project budget.
Clarifications on data publishing
Q: Are expenses linked to DNA sequencing and analysis eligible to be funded under the BID programme?
A: BID funds may be used to cover up to a maximum of €3,000 for institutional grants, and up to €6,000 for multi-institutional grants, of the cost of any IT services or equipment purchases. This includes costs related to lab equipment such as microscopes, sequencing equipment, and lab fees, which means that such expenses would be considered eligible within the stated limits. Costs associated with laboratory research aimed at capturing new data are not eligible for funding under the BID programme. These activities may still be included in BID project proposals, if applicants clearly indicate they will be supported through other sources and included as part of the co-funding committed by the applicant.
Q: Can a substantial amount of the funds be used for data use, or is it only for data mobilization? How to fill in correctly the form when activities are targeting both, data mobilization and data use? Data which will be published as metadata datasets: are these types of data eligible and interesting for the grant or not?
A: The call states as a guideline that at least 50% of the funding to go towards activities to mobilize data. It is a requirement to have listed activities under each activity area: there are 2 for institutional grants and 3 for the multi-institutional grants. You must have listed an activity under each priority area and then you can give a description in the activity on how you intend to address those goals. If an activity is relevant to more than one priority area, list it under the one that is most relevant.
You can publish metadata only datasets. We encourage projects to publish as rich as possible data. Metadata datasets are valuable and increases the discoverability of collections that are not yet digitized. Have a look at the data deliverable requirements: Requirements for data deliverables of BID projects
Q: For a project involving the digitization and publication of biodiversity data, can we use an intermediary web platform?
A: The answer is yes. The data published via GBIF is based on set of community-based standards, DwC standards. The data need to be standardized (“translated”) from whichever platform they are currently housed on, into the same standards and made available for publishing into GBIF.
Q: Can new data be generated? Or should we only work with existing data?
A: The main focus of the BID programme is on mobilizing existing sources of data. You can generate additional new data, but this would need to be covered by co-funding.
Q: Data must be published through each country node?
A: The data publishing in GBIF is done on the level of institution. Institutions are agreeing to publish the data, and this can be done by using the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT),and these institutions are endorsed by the node, confirming that they are legitimate and recognized (see Quick guide to publishing data through GBIF.org) .