December 30, 2016
If you are interested in receiving USAID funding, the USAID business forecast is an important resource. USAID releases the forecast quarterly. The forecast provides information on awards that USAID is developing, including grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements.
The forecast has two parts: one for development opportunities posted by USAID Missions overseas, and another, usually the higher-value opportunities (in terms of dollars), for development opportunities posted by USAID in Washington, DC. USAID releases each forecast in two formats: a PDF and an Excel file. The Excel and PDF versions should be identical, but it is worth checking both, particularly if you are monitoring the forecast for updates on a specific opportunity. It's rare, but sometimes not all opportunities make it into both formats.
The forecast includes the following information (the amount of information varies for each award):
The Mission/Bureau/Office releasing the opportunity
The name of the contact person (the Acquisition and Assistance Specialist)
The award title
The award description
The program sector (e.g., democracy, human rights, and governance)
The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code
The total estimated cost/amount range
The implementing partner, if known
Award/action type (i.e., grant, contract)
Whether the award will include a small business set-aside
The fiscal year of action
The anticipated award date
Anticipated solicitation release date
Award length
Solicitation number
Business forecast status change
The information you find in the forecast varies, both from forecast to forecast and, within a forecast, between anticipated awards.
USAID has recently made finding business forecasts much easier. In the past, using the USAID website's search function to find the business forecast did not always return the correct page. Now, typing “business forecast” into the website’s search bar returns the relevant pages.
In addition to making navigation much easier, USAID is prominently featuring ways to stay up to date on the forecast and receive forecast alerts. USAID also now hosts quarterly conference calls to answer questions following the release of each forecast. USAID promotes the calls through social media venues such as Twitter and LinkedIn as well as on the U.S. government website for Federal Business Opportunities, FedBizOpps (www.fbo.gov).
The USAID website displays the current forecast and a limited archive of the forecasts from the last 1-2 quarters. If you want a forecast from an earlier period (months or years), you can try to retrieve it using the Wayback Machine. The Wayback Machine is an archive of the Internet. A search using the Wayback Machine can often surface older USAID business forecasts. Although you probably will never have to go back to a forecast released several years ago, it can be a useful research tool if you want to investigate the history of a prior award.
To use the Wayback Machine to find earlier forecasts, here is a suggested sequence of steps:
Step 1: Go to the Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web/
Step 2: Type the full USAID web address (http://www.usaid.gov) into the “browse history” search bar.
Step 3: Review the timeline and select the year the forecast first appeared. Next, you'll see individual calendars for each month for that year.
Step 4: Choose a specific date (month and day) to check the archives. You'll see blue circles around the dates that contain archived site material. The larger circles indicate that more site snapshots were taken on the chosen date, while the smallest circles indicate that only one snapshot was taken. If there are no circles, it means no site snapshots were taken that day.
Step 5: After you click on your chosen date, the archived USAID site will open up in a new window. If you want to change the year, use the Wayback Machine slider at the top of the screen to quickly scroll through snapshots from other time periods.
Retrieving earlier forecasts from the Wayback Machine can take some time. However, there is a good chance you’ll find the forecast you need, particularly if the forecast came out after 2004.
If you are interested in USAID funding, reviewing forecasts is worth doing alongside your other prospect research activities, such as daily or weekly reviews of Grants.gov. When you spot an opportunity of interest in the forecast, you can position your organization to win by planning the proposal strategy and recruiting technical staff to assist with the response.