I received the following e-mail yesterday, announcing the end of the STeP website ( stepsforsanitation.org/ ) (interesting use of words: "will sunset"):

Over the last six years, RTI Innovation Advisors has implemented the Sanitation Technology Platform
(STeP) program, in support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's transformative sanitation technology program .
As the Gates Foundation’s transformative sanitation efforts shift from supporting a global network of
partners and research, to a locally-led market-based, market-driven approach,
the STeP program and Stepsforsanitation.org will sunset. Local organizations in
countries where transformative sanitation solutions will go to market first,
will lead ongoing efforts to develop new products and market research.

[...]

Publications previously housed within the Stepsforsanitation.org Resource Center will be
relocated to Gates Open Research . For more information about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s reinvented toilet initiative, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Together with many of you, the STeP program generated resources that have advanced sector learning on sanitation markets, customers, and processing technologies.

Thank you to the organizations that have partnered with STeP over the years. We are grateful for your partnership.

This now answers my question that I asked two years ago in this thread about how long this website is funded for. Funding has come to an end, it seems.

I am looking at the new website, the  Gates Open Research  and am wondering how people will use that website, if things there will be found with Google searches, if we should also put some of those publications into the SuSanA library and so forth. What do you make of this?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Andrea,

Thanks for your forum post and welcome to the forum!
You'll be pleased to know that I have just subscribed to your newsletter.

I have also looked at your website under "updates": stepsforsanitation.org/updates/
I'd like to encourage you to also post such updates here in this thread from time to time to make people aware of your work (you can just copy the update into a forum post or write a couple of sentences for a summary and then add the link).

Looking at your updates I see many new reports being published. Do you think we should add these reports also to the SuSanA library? I see you have your own resource centre: stepsforsanitation.org/resource-center/
Would it create unnecessary work for someone to upload them also to the SuSanA library, or is it useful to have them in two places so that more people can find them? (I am leaning towards the latter)

Also, how does the funding work for STeP? How long is your funding by BMGF guaranteed for and what would come afterwards? Would the website and project falter if the BMGF funding stopped? (I am speaking from experience because the funding that SuSanA had received from BMGF for some excellent additional work stopped end of last year and now we are back to the more "baseline" type funding for SuSanA which doesn't allow for the same level of ambition, so this requires some re-adjustment; see also here and here ).

Regards,
Elisabeth

@ Elisabeth: Thanks so much for your interest in STeP, and for sharing a bit about our platform to other Susana users. STeP serves as a platform to de-risk and accelerate novel sanitation solutions. We understand that commercializing new products in emerging markets represents a complex, challenging undertaking. Developing a sound business model, securing a reliable supply chain, adhering to established rules and regulations—these are just some of the many risks that threaten to derail promising sanitation technologies and enterprises before they’ve even had an opportunity to reach the market. We help partners—technology developers, commercial partners, and financing partners—navigate this challenging terrain. In doing so, STeP doesn’t just focus on technology development. We take a holistic systems-based approach to partner and commercialization support that integrates market, user, and technology insights. Our full range of services includes field testing, as well as logistics and management; market readiness and technology transfer; and user insights development.

We’ve been honored to work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Reinvent the Toilet Challenge partners since 2015. That said, our efforts to de-risk and accelerate novel sanitation solutions doesn’t end there. We welcome the opportunity to work with others who are actively developing, testing, and commercializing novel sanitation solutions, as well as those who want to source such solutions. Specific partnership arrangements vary based on scope and emphasis, so interested parties should feel free to contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or our Market Readiness Lead, Amanda Rose, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can find out more about the services we provide and the resources we’ve developed on our website: stepsforsanitation.org. And of course we would love for everyone reading to sign up for our newsletter to keep up with our latest reports and project updates.

I just noticed that in my post in July above I had forgotten to give you the website link for STeP. I have now edited my earlier post and here it is the link again:
stepsforsanitation.org/

Does anyone have any feedback about this website?

I would like to bring to your attention a relatively new website and initiative called STeP, which stands for Sanitation Technology Platform, see here: stepsforsanitation.org/

It was set up with funding by the Gates Foundation and implemented by RTI (RTI is a SuSanA partner, see here: www.susana.org/en/community/partners/list/details/557).

The website is useful for anyone who wants to get an update on what the BMGF-funded projects that are dealing with technologies are up to. It also has a small resource centre that anyone can use:

Reports and resources are now organized around three portfolios of information:

Reinvented Toilet
- What is the global market opportunity for the RT technologies?
- How do RT technologies compare against existing sanitation solutions?
- Who are potential buyers and users of RT technologies?

Omni Processor
- What is the global market opportunity for the Omni Processor portfolio? What are the use cases for the Omni Processor technologies?
- What are the economics of the OP portfolio? How do I build the business case (including output valuation)?
- What is the value proposition of the OP? How does the OP compare against existing sanitation solutions?

Field Testing and Supporting Activities
- Applying a user-centered design approach to the Reinvented Toilet development process
- STeP Global Testing Protocols and Parameters
- Ethics and Safety Guide

STeP is a collaboration platform of support for partners of the Gates Foundation that is, itself, based on partnership. Together, with leading organizations, universities, and experts around the world, STeP delivers expertise and support in market intelligence, engineering and technical support, research and testing capabilities, user insights, commercialization, and more.

All the publications on their website are free for anyone to download and use. To access their services though, you have to be a BMGF grantee, in their portfolio of "Transformative Technologies" (if I am not wrong).

Regards,
Elisabeth