FAQs

What activities are eligible for PROFOR funding?
PROFOR funds activities that are relevant to the four thematic areas – livelihoods, finance, governance and cross-sectoral cooperation – and have good potential for significant gains in knowledge with high applicability to a wide range of situations.

Activities must also be in line with PROFOR donor priorities and have relevance to broader World Bank country programs. PROFOR’s request for proposals on priority topics provides more details on specific topics eligible for PROFOR support. The overall forest conservation and development outcomes, the sustainability of the work, the reputation and capacity of applicant organization, and ability to leverage funding are all considerations. The PROFOR funding criteria provide more details.

What is the procedure for submitting a proposal to PROFOR?
PROFOR proposals are accepted and reviewed by the PROFOR Secretariat on a rolling basis.

A concept note for a proposed activity must be completed and submitted to the PROFOR Secretariat. The concept note provides essential information on a proposed activity's objective, implementation strategy, expected outputs and impacts, geographical focus, timing, and estimated budget. Concept notes are screened to verify that they meet the criteria to be eligible for funding (see above). Subsequently, proposals are funded on a priority basis of those that best met the criteria given the resources available to PROFOR. The Guidelines for Application for PROFOR Funding provide further detail.

What is the relationship between PROFOR and its host organization, the World Bank?
PROFOR is housed at the World Bank because of the synergies between PROFOR's thematic work and the objectives of the World Bank 2002 Forests Strategy – poverty reduction, sustainable economic development, and protection of global forest values. In many cases, PROFOR's analytical work contributes to the Bank's work at the national level by helping to build knowledge needed to inform policy reform process and to share experiences between countries facing similar obstacles within the forest sector. PROFOR has also been able to play a role in catalyzing dialogue on reform in key countries by providing knowledge in a timely manner and convening key stakeholders. Some examples of these synergies include PROFOR's work in Russia, India and Honduras.

What is the relationship between PROFOR and the NFP Facility?
The National Forest Programme Facility (Facility) and the Program on Forests (PROFOR) are two initiatives with a common mandate – to support national forest programs (nfps) or other national forest policy processes. In short, the Facility provides country support to enable governmental and civil society actors to manage and develop nfp processes, whereas PROFOR supports analytical work and generates knowledge in the form of lessons learnt and new tools and approaches on key issues within the forest sector, such as forests-poverty linkages. These two distinct yet complimentary roles are the foundation of a two-way partnership between PROFOR and the Facility: the Facility's engagement in many countries throughout the world provides experiences that can help to inform PROFOR's work; and the tools, concepts and approaches generated by PROFOR can help Facility countries in developing and implementing their nfps. A briefing note on the relationship between the NFP Facility and PROFOR highlights how the two programs work in partnership.