Consultant, External Review of the IFRC DREF

Organizational Context

Established in 1979, the IFRC-IFRC-DREF has built over 40 years of experience in providing loans and grants to National Societies. Since its inception, more than 220 million people in crisis worldwide have benefited from the IFRC-IFRC-DREF support.

 

The IFRC’s IFRC-DREF aspires to deliver swift and adaptable financial and technical support to local Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, enhancing their capacity to rescue and protect lives during emergencies. By prioritizing agility, flexibility, and timeliness, the IFRC-IFRC-DREF aims to maximize its impact in saving lives and ensuring effective humanitarian responses in local communities. Enhancing IFRC-DREF partnerships In line with rising humanitarian needs and increasing pressure on National Societies to anticipate and respond to disasters and crises, the IFRC-IFRC-DREF launched its strategic ambition 2021-2025 in 2020 to enable local action with direct funding, save lives through crisis anticipation, and increase the value of IFRC-DREF in protracted, slow onset, and complex events.

 

To achieve these goals, the IFRC’s strategic ambition has been to reach at least CHF 100 million per year by 2025, of which, up to CHF 20 million will be generated through the insurance structure.  

 

To achieve its strategic ambition, the IFRC-DREF entered an evolutive process in October 2022 and ever since significant changes and adaptations have been made to its operational parameters. This evolution, aligned with the IFRC Strategy 2030, aims to elevate the IFRC-DREF into a more agile and flexible emergency financing mechanism. The objective is to better support National Societies in their emergency humanitarian response operations and to effectively address the needs of the increasingly vulnerable populations affected by complex crises.

 

The new parameters also resonate with the IFRC-DREF Ambition 2025, which envisions a more adaptable, agile, and customized IFRC-DREF to empower National Societies as robust and efficient local actors. This entails fostering trust and accountability, facilitating digital transformation, and enhancing operational efficiency across the Federation’s wide membership. Furthermore, in line with the IFRC leadership’s decision to elevate the IFRC-DREF as a flagship initiative, these enhancements underscore the strategic importance of the IFRC-DREF’s evolution in driving forward the organization’s broader goals and commitments.

 

In 2023, the IFRC-DREF Review Framework underwent a comprehensive revision, guided by the technical expertise of IFRC-DREF Advisory Group Members and alignment with the IFRC Review framework developed by the PMER Global team.

 

In 2023, the IFRC IFRC-DREF underwent a large-scale review of the support provided to Africa’s Hunger Crisis.

 

To maintain the IFRC’s commitment to continuous improvement and effectiveness, IFRC-IFRC-DREF has outlined a series of reviews to be undertaken throughout 2024. These reviews, in line with the IFRC-IFRC-DREF Operational Reviews Framework, aim to gather insights crucial for the management and advancement of the Fund.

Job Purpose

The IFRC seeks to review the impact the IFRC-IFRC-DREF has had on the affected communities and the IFRC-IFRC-DREF’s overall progress against its strategic ambition for 2021-2025, by identifying main achievements and good practices.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

1. Scope

The impact the IFRC-IFRC-DREF has made on the affected communities will be reviewed by selecting National Societies with a specific deep dive into one to two specific IFRC-DREF operations that will be proposed by the IFRC. The consultants will in addition do a desk evaluation of existing IFRC-IFRC-DREF reviews and reports to assess the impact.

The review will also examine the strategic advancement of the three strategic objectives and the three enablers related to Enabling Actions defined in the Strategic Ambition 2021-2025, available via this link: https://www.ifrc.org/document/IFRC-DREF-strategic-ambition-2021-2025

These are:

Strategic Objective 1: Enabling local action – enough funding as direct as possible

Strategic Objective 2: Saving more lives by anticipating crises and acting earlier 

Strategic Objective 3:  Increasing the value of IFRC-DREF in protracted, slow onset and complex events.

 

Enabler 1: A lean, effective fund

Enabler 2: Increased support for strengthening National Societies

Enabler 3: National Society Ownership and Trust

 

The proposed review will meticulously examine the key evolutions of the parameters and newly developed tools to ascertain if the changes have been effectively managed and have had the anticipated positive impact. The review will assess whether these changes have exceeded expectations, identify areas for potential improvement, or determine if further refinement of proposed changes is necessary. The Evaluation team should assess progress and formulate specific recommendations according to the indicators included in the strategic ambition (see below).

The evaluation team should examine below taking into account the following DAC Criteria: Relevance, Coherence, Effectiveness, Efficiency, Impact and Sustainability.

 The attached Assessment grid (Annex 1) for project/ programme evaluations of SDC interventions will be used as a reference in the process to present the results of the review more transparently and to transform the qualitative information into quotative scores.  Nevertheless, it needs to be acknowledged that such a grid applies primarily to program evaluations and requires significant adaptation to assess the performance of a pool fund.

 

2. Focus

The breadth and depth of the evaluation will be informed by the indicative evaluation questions that the evaluation seeks to answer (see chapter below). The evaluation will assess above mentioned strategic objectives and enablers.

The timeframe is limited from 30 June 2024 to 1 November 2024.

During the inception phase, the evaluator(s), in consultation with the IFRC, should further refine and prioritize the questions that are structured according to the OECD DAC criteria that reflect the objectives of the review as outlined above.

 

Please see here the proposed questions for the strategic objectives and enablers. 

 

3. Evaluation process and methods

3.1 Evaluation methodology

The review is for both internal and external purposes and would be available to IFRC stakeholders.

• Desk review/analysis of relevant documents, reports policy documents, procedures, guidelines, online applications, databases, dashboards, KPIs. These would also include the review of existing IFRC-DREF operations reviews & evaluations, IFRC-DREF Audit from 2021
• Interviews with IFRC staff, IFRC-DREF Council members, and IFRC-DREF Advisory Group members
• Interviews with selected donors to IFRC-DREF
• Interviews with selected National Societies benefiting from IFRC -DREF

 

Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)

3.2 Evaluation process and timeframe

The following work plan provides suggested dates, responsibilities, and resources needed for the various activities of the review/ evaluation process. This work plan will eventually be adapted by the evaluation team, in consultation with the IFRC, during the inception phase.

The consultancy of the review will begin on 01 July 2024 and will be completed by 30 October 2024.

Proposed timeframe

Activity	Deadline
Advertisement of consultancy	Mid-June 2024
Selection of consultants	By the end of June 2024
Inception report submission	31 August 2024
Review and feedback on the Inception Report	15 September 2024
Draft final report submission	1 October 2024
Review of draft final report and feedback	15 October 2024
Final report submission	30 October 2024

 

4. Expected deliverables

The contractor will submit to the IFRC the following deliverables:

• Inception report
• Final report of approximately 15 pages
• The Assessment grid (Annex 1)
• Delivery of a key findings’ presentation and validation of recommendations
• PowerPoint presentation for use as part of the dissemination

 

5. Reference Documents

After signing the contract, the contractor will share the following documents with the evaluator(s) for the evaluator’s first desk review:

• IFRC -DREF 2025 strategic ambition
• IFRC -DREF SOPs and Guidelines
• IFRC IFRC-DREF 2.0 materials
• Previous IFRC- IFRC-DREF evaluations
  

 

6. Confidentiality

All data collected during this exercise will become the property of IFRC and will not be shared with third parties without the express permission of IFRC.

 

7. Insurance

The consultant would need his/her own insurance that is in line with the requirements of country from where they are operating.

Experience

Required

• Significant relevant experience in the subject area and research methodologies.
• Demonstrable experience in devising, managing, and conducting research programmes.
• Track record of writing high-quality research reports for consumption by external policy and programme audiences.
• Experience working with the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, UN or other national or international NGO, donors or with government authorities at the national level in the area of research and analytical report development.

Knowledge, Skills and Languages

Required

• Excellent spoken and written communication skills in English.
• Proven ability to apply the DAC evaluation standards.
• Familiarity with working with the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and related funding mechanisms.

Competencies, Values and Comments

Application Instructions

We welcome applications from individual researchers/consultants, or teams consisting of researchers with affiliation to well-established academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, research institutes or think-tanks or policy institutes, with expertise in conducting similar research to high ethical standards.

Please see below the application instructions:

• Please submit your application in English only.
• Please submit
  • A cover letter that addresses the outlined criteria and summarizes relevant experience.
  • Curriculum Vitae (CV) of applicant(s). In the same document, please include
    • A financial proposal detailing daily consultancy fees and total cost of evaluation (in CHF or USD)
    • A technical proposal of three pages that includes proposed methodology.
    • Details of three professional references
    • Two samples of previous written reports produced in English, where the consultancy team is the sole or lead author, and that are most similar to the ToR description.

 

Application materials are non-returnable, and we thank you in advance for understanding that only short-listed candidates will be contacted for the next step in the application process and the selection panel does not have the capacity to respond to any requests for application feedback. Please take note that expressions of interest that do not cover these requirements will not be considered.