Driving Innovation – Business to Business Collaboration Contractor

Established in 1976, Habitat for Humanity International has a vision of a world where everyone has a safe and decent place to live. Habitat for Humanity collaborates with local communities in more than 70 countries and has supported more than 35 million people to gain access to decent shelter.

Habitat’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter works to create a more inclusive housing market. Currently there are 2.8 billion people who, faced with housing inadequacy, are looking for innovative and affordable products to improve their homes. But the market response is slow. Innovative sheltertech solutions are often driven by startup companies, struggling with scaling. Meanwhile large companies may lack the speed and agility to produce such innovations, particularly in a sector that can be slow to change.

At the Terwilliger Center we test new approaches to influence the housing market, including work with business players such as:

Our established relationships with many built environment corporations

• Our Creating Shared Value projects
• Our work with innovative businesses, including our ShelterTech platform

B2B Collaboration

• Our new Business-to-Business (B2B) Collaboration program will forge collaborations between established leaders and businesses with innovative or social business mandates. The scope includes building materials as well as other allied services such as water and energy. It also includes relevant digital technology, for example to enable home insurance for low-income households.
• Our program will specifically drive innovation around climate change mitigation and adaptation, building on our recent work, for example “Emerging Opportunity: the Hidden Role of Sheltertech in Climate Tech Investing” .
• Our program is ultimately seeking collaboration in the product innovation, distribution channels, supply chains and corporate impact finance.

We note:

• Significant progress made in Europe working with large businesses to incorporate social enterprises in their supply chains
• New European corporate sustainability reporting requirements (and globally ) giving a legislative push for corporates to revision their impacts across their group structures
• Programs that create dialogue between corporations and smaller impact-driven businesses e.g. Business Fights Poverty , Acumen and Transform
• Our program will be one of a small number of pioneers seeking to build impact in a specific sector through forging business collaborations. We therefore enter into this pilot as a learning opportunity to test:
• Collaboration as a way to influence market actors towards the low-income household segment and sustainability;
• Which business models and partnerships can more effectively service low-income households; and
• Whether a B2B collaboration program can create more inclusive housing markets benefiting low income households
• Our program will run from May 2024 to 30th June 2026, including an inception/co-creation stage, and a final stage to collect learning and share these.
• In addition to this RFP budget, we have earmarked a small amount of funding to support the full and equal participation of collaboration partners (for example for small business participants).

Scope

• Our delivery partner will work closely with the Terwilliger Center, as follows:
• Terwilliger Center and Delviery Partner jointly:
• Co-designing program offerings including: participant recruitment, match-making process, support offer for collaborations.
• Recruitment and on-boarding of interested corporate partners, sheltertech and other innovative SMEs (resulting in 10 collaboration projects minimum, each involving 2+ partners)

Terwilliger Center Lead, Delivery Partner Contributes:

• Design Monitoring Evaluation and Learning framework
• Finalise communications narrative, timeline, templates, etc

Delivery Partner Leads, Terwilliger Center Contributes:

• Operationalising MEAL within all activities
• Deliver program to drive, support and maximise impact through the collaboration projects.
• Deliver progress and end of program impact and program reports as shall be agreed with the client
• Our budget for this work is $200k, across the delivery timeframe.
• We welcome partners who bring additional financial contributions to the program, through aligned activities or commitments that can be worked into the above.

Proposal Details

Applications are welcome from firms, organizations, and other actors. Applicants must demonstrate a track record of running B2B collaboration programs and be able to demonstrate specific learnings to apply to our new pilot. Please provide examples of such assignments undertaken and provide references.

Applicants need to:

• Submit proposals (under five pages) covering:
• Strategy, plan and budget
• Execution strategy, detailing steps to ensure success in terms of achieving the required number of collaboration projects, providing support that is beneficial, and overall maximising the impact for low-income households
• Critical activities, timeline, milestones and deliverables
• Detail of critical communication activities to promote the program, incl partner networks, potential reach and channels.
• Details of project personnel incl relevant experience
• Estimated budget, incl personnel, travel, etc. (Incl any opportunities to leverage your pre-existing plans/funds for work in this space and any budgetary contributions)
• Join us for an interview to discuss your proposal
• Excellent written and spoken English are required.

Evaluation Criteria

Selection Criteria

Proposals will be evaluated based on their technical soundness and financial viability. The criteria will include:

• Overall design and strategy for the program
• Proven record and accomplishments in B2B collaboration projects and working with corporates to support impact outcomes, ideally with regards to international development outcomes
• Experience of personnel and their level of expertise in their role
• Evidence of rigorous attention to Monitoring Evaluation and Learning
• Proven ability to effectively communicate through writing and design
• Budget/breakdown of costs related to the program.
• Financial contribution through pre-existing budgets and aligned activities

Timeframe

• 27th February 2024: Detailed RFP posted
• COB 25th March: Submission deadline
• COB 28th March: Shortlisted proposals will be notified
• 3 April: Shortlisted proposals interviews
• 5th April: Notification of selected partner and contracting begins
• 22nd April: Onboarding Call
• W/c 20th/27th May: co-creation workshop over c2 days, location tbc

Please submit proposal via email [email protected]