Partnerships
USAID/Brazil utilizes various acquisition and assistance instruments to establish partnerships and implement its activities. Contracts, grants, cooperative agreements and purchase orders are some of the instruments which are negotiated and signed by USAID, as follows:

Contracts

• Contracts are used when the principal purpose of the instrument is to acquire supplies or services for the direct benefit or use of USAID or any other U.S. Federal government entity; or
• USAID determines in a specific instance that the use of a contract is appropriate; and
• USAID plans to exercise a substantial degree of operational control.

Grants

• Grants are used when the principal purpose of the relationship is the transfer of money, supplies, services or anything of value to the recipient in order to accomplish a public purpose of support or stimulation, which is authorized by Federal statute; and
• Substantial involvement is not anticipated between USAID and the recipient during implementation of the activity.

Cooperative Agreements

• Cooperative agreements are used when the principal purpose of the relationship is the transfer of money, supplies, services or anything of value to the recipient in order to accomplish a public purpose of support or stimulation which is authorized by Federal statute; and
• Substantial involvement is anticipated between USAID and the recipient during implementation of the activity.

Business opportunities
USAID publishes business opportunities at http://www.grants.gov/, through the following instruments:

• Requests for Assistance (RFA)
  These instruments invite interested parties to submit applications for USAID assistance and explain what the application should contain, how it should be written, and the evaluation criteria to be used.
• Annual Program Statements (APS)
  USAID generates competition for implementing activities that are complementary to its strategic objectives through annually published Annual Program Statements. These statements solicit and support creative approaches by the non-governmental community that will accomplish stated objectives and may be multi-country or global in nature. They emanate from Global and Regional bureaus, and Missions.