Invitation to tender for companies offering funding proposal development services

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is an independent humanitarian organization helping people forced to flee. NRC works in crisis across 40 countries, providing life-saving and long-term assistance to millions of people every year. In 2023, NRC reached 9.7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

In order to strengthen NRC’s ability to secure donor funding and to further diversify the organisations funding base, we are hereby inviting companies with excellent proposal development skills and experience to this bidding process. Given the current funding landscape for humanitarian and development assistance, NRC has a strategic ambition to have surge capacity to support our offices in proposal development for funding opportunities and to tap into new funding streams to finance our projects. Companies selected under the proposed Framework Agreement will play a contributing role in achieving this ambition.

Successful applicants will be signing a Framework Agreement with NRC and will be contacted and offered opportunities for short-term consultancies when appropriate opportunities arise. The Framework Agreement will be valid for a period of two years until August 2026, with a possibility for extending the agreement by two additional years.

Interested suppliers can submit applications by email to [email protected]by the deadline: 19 August 2024.

Scope of service

We are looking for experienced companies with the purpose to deploy experts in short-term field assignments to assist in programme design (assessments, planning and establishing partnerships) and to be lead writer for funding proposals.

Proposal development assignments are expected to last between two and three weeks on average. While the majority of assignments will be carried out in NRC Country Offices worldwide, it is also envisaged that some initiatives might have to be supported from NRC’s Head Office in Oslo, Norway. For some unique cases, support may also be provided remotely from the consultant’s home location.

Successful applicants will be signing a Framework Agreement with NRC and will be contacted and offered opportunities for short-term consultancies when appropriate opportunities arise. The Framework Agreement will be valid for a period of two years, with a possibility for renewal for two more years.

Technical requirements

1. Company background and profile including number of consultants, seniority of consultants and deployment capacities (subject to technical evaluation)
2. Examples of provision of similar services and previous experience in similar services (subject to technical evaluation)
3. Ability to flexibly and rapidly source resources (subject to technical evaluation)
4. Pricing model and cost breakdown by resource type (subject to technical evaluation)
5. Demonstrated excellence in service, support and warranties (subject to technical evaluation)
6. Adherence to ethical, environmental, anti-corruption NRC policies (subject to technical evaluation)
7. Adherence to the following requirement which shall be inserted into the contract of the successful applicant: The Consultant shall not enter any information provided by NRC into an artificial intelligence model or similar platform.

Responsibilities of the service supplier

• Having a roster of minimum 10 consultant
• Having consultants on senior (minimum five years of relevant experience) and medior (two to five years of relevant experience) levels in their roster
• Collaborating with the requesting NRC unit on Terms of Reference for each particular assignment, including assurance quality delivery of products in accordance with the given requirements and timeframe
• Provide relevant feedback on process to NRC focal point for framework agreements upon request and maintain dialogue throughout the lifecycle of the framework agreement
• Demonstrating successful writing of large proposals (preferably over USD 1 million per year) for institutional donors is essential
• Ability to surge consultants to undertake assignments of short notice/tight timeframe
• Ability to deploy consultant to insecure field locations on short notice.
• Broad knowledge about institutional donors rules and requirements
• Ability to undertake consultancies in different languages (mainly English, German, French, and Spanish). Additional languages are desirable
• Broad programmatic knowledge

Depending on the complexity of the assignment and requirements of the Terms of Reference for, it is desirable that the interested supplier in some cases is able to provide a team of consultants (as opposed to one single consultant) to ensure the Terms of Reference requirements are completely fulfilled and the deliverables are completed within the set timeframes

Generic responsibilities of the assigned consultant

• Ability to conduct desk review of existing documents relevant for each assignment transmitted by NRC, such as reports and evaluations
• Work closely with NRC staff in the requesting unit/NRC office in collecting information such as research and evidence, including input from relevant stakeholders
• Depending on the Terms of Reference, conduct remotely and/or on-premises meetings with all relevant stakeholders for the proposal development, with the facilitation of NRC
• Liaise with the requesting unit/NRC office technical, programme and support functions as needed
• Prepare, edit and finalise narrative texts related to the logical of the intervention, project design and theory of change, in line with donors’ requirements and guidelines
• Ensure coherence between narrative and budget documents
• Integrate input and feedback and ultimately produce a final proposal for approval and submission
• Editing and proofreading of proposal documents

Qualities of the consultant:

• Handling insecure environments
• Planning and delivering results on time
• Communicating with impact and respect
• Strategic thinking
• Ability to work independently in a results-oriented, multi-tasking and multi-cultural environment
• Willingness to undertake shorter missions to the field on short notice

Specific responsibilities and required qualifications, skills and delivery time will depend on each assignment and be defined in the Terms of Reference for the specific assignment.