Principal Recipient

The Principal Recipient is nominated by the Country Coordinating Mechanism as the grantee. Once a proposal has been approved, the Principal Recipient works with the Global Fund Secretariat to develop a grant agreement (PDF - 407 KB) which sets out the funds to be provided to the program, the terms and conditions under which the funds will be made available, and program results to be achieved over time.

Once the agreement has been signed, grant funds are disbursed to and managed by the Principal Recipient who may in turn channel funds to other organizations (sub-recipients) to implement activities under the grantee’s oversight. The Principal Recipient reports on a regular basis to the Secretariat on results achieved against the agreed performance targets, on expenditures against budgets and on progress against any conditions precedent detailed in the grant agreement or other Global Fund requirements.

The Principal Recipient may be a nongovernmental organization, a public entity (such as a government ministry), a private sector organization or development agency.

Specific role of the Principal Recipient in performance-based funding

• At grant negotiation, the Principal Recipient works with the Secretariat to finalize a performance framework which contains the country-defined indicators, targets and time frame against which program performance will be measured during the period covered by the grant agreement.
• For periodic disbursements, the Principal Recipient submits an update on the progress of the program with the request for funding to cover the next period of implementation.
• For grant renewal, the Principal Recipient negotiates a new performance framework with the Secretariat for the remainder of the period covered by the proposal.

More information about Principal Recipients