Request for Proposal on consultancy to provide capacity strengthening support to AGECS civil society partners on Community Philanthropy

About the Aga Khan Development Network

The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) is a network of private, non-denominational development agencies that share a mission to improve the living conditions and opportunities for marginalized communities across 30 countries in Africa and Asia. Through innovative, community-driven solutions that span social, economic, and cultural dimensions, AKDN agencies aim to holistically improve quality of life.

AKDN’s education goal is to ensure all girls. boys, women, and men, are equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to help them interact effectively with the world and be contributing members of a pluralistic society. AKDN assumes a holistic and systems approach to education programming ensuring all interventions are globally informed, locally rooted, are embedded in government and community interests and structures, and work to promote social inclusion, equity, and pluralism. AKDN invests in all sectors of the formal education systems, from pre-primary to tertiary, as well as in other formal and informal life-long learning opportunities, including teacher professional development. AKDN education agencies operating in East Africa are the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and its affiliate, the Madrasa Early Childhood Programme (MECP), Aga Kan University (AKU), Aga Khan Academies (AKA), and Aga Khan Education Services (AKES).

About the Aga Khan Foundation

AKF seeks sustainable solutions to long-term problems of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, and ill-health, with special emphasis on the needs of rural communities in mountainous, coastal, and other resource-poor areas. In East Africa, AKF responds to local and regional priorities by developing and implementing effective programming, measuring, and documenting results and sharing lessons with governments, donors, and development actors to influence policy and practice. AKF operates a multi-sectoral portfolio that includes programming in Education, Economic Inclusion, Civil Society, Health and Early Childhood Development. Gender Equality is a cross cutting theme in the portfolio. AKF will be the primary interlocutor for this assignment but engaging all AKDN education agencies in the process will be critical.

Background

Identifying and leveraging local resources and relationships is a central tenet of the Aga Khan Foundation’s work with civil society.

Strengthening philanthropy helps to:

• Change local development dynamics.
• Foster greater trust among stakeholders
• Decrease reliance on external donors.
• Increase sustainability of local development interventions

AKF is a founding member of the Global Alliance for Community Philanthropy, which promotes the development of assets, capacity, and trust in support of local development. AKF’s philanthropy strengthening initiatives vary from national-level giving campaigns in Kenya to grassroots community mobilizing in Afghanistan. In Kenya, through the YETU[1] initiative, AKF has strengthened the capacity of Kenyan civil society organizations (CSOs) rooted in the communities they serve to advance the principles of self-reliance and locally sustained development. These CSOs leveraged community assets, capacity, and trust for community philanthropy. Working with 260 local organizations, both national and grassroots across 42 counties out of 47 counties, the YETU partners undertook the community philanthropy boot camp ultimately raising a total $2.48M, in cash and in kind since 2014-2022.

The community philanthropy boot camp approach is an integrated capacity-building model that enables civil society organizations (CSOs) to quickly and effectively gain skills to engage in community philanthropy. Through a learning-by-doing method, CSOs participate in workshops, coaching, mentoring, and peer learning over a specified period where they practice and improve their skills in local resource mobilization. The community philanthropy course is a blended learning course that builds on the adult learning principles of experiential learning, peer learning, relevant content, and practice.

The Advancing Gender Equality through Civil Society (AGECS) is a constituent of the Foundations for Education and empowerment (F4EE) project in Africa, executed by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) and implemented in partnership with AKDN agencies across geographies in Africa. AGECS aims to promote gender equality through targeted and transformative programming delivered by AKDN in partnership with local women’s organizations and organizations working for gender equality in both regions. As part of the five-year F4HEE program, AGECS’s focuses on supporting women’s organizations (WOs) to deliver gender equality programming. AGECS promotes gender equality by strengthening the capacity of CSOs working on gender equality and women’s empowerment. It will also improve the ability of civil society organizations (CSOs) to become more gender-responsive; directly responding to the challenges facing women in civic spaces.

The Regional community philanthropy

One of the outcomes under AGECS is to enhance the ability of local community structures, institutions, and in this case, local CSOs to raise funds and mobilize other support from local donors. Utilizing the YETU community Philanthropy boot camp approach, AKF seeks to conduct a regional community philanthropy boot camp for the AGECS civil society partners in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar to build their capacities to raise funds locally. We propose to conduct a Regional community philanthropy boot camp which will support AGECS CSOs partners to explore community philanthropy practice, gain skills on local philanthropy and harness local giving in service of development and social justice.

Purpose of this consultancy

AKF seeks a consultant or a consultancy firm to lead the capacity development to AGECS partners in local resources mobilization to enable them raise resources locally to meet longer term needs and address immediate needs of communities. The lead consultant will lead the regional community philanthropy will utilize the virtual boot camp approach and the blended learning course. Coaching and mentorship will be provided through this consultancy in collaboration with AKF AGECS-civil society coordinators. In addition, the consultant will also leverage the YETU CS alumni and other in county and regional community philanthropy partners such as Civsource (Uganda), Giving Tuesday, EAPN for further support on community philanthropy. Opportunities such as twinning and peer to peer learning in country or regionally should also be utilized as needed.

Scope of work and Deliverables

1. Adapt/redesign the Yetu Boot camp Approach to the needs of AGECS and its CSO partners
2. Oversee the implementation of the Yetu Boot camp Approach and Blended Learning Course in close collaboration with the AGECS team
3. Work with the AKF AGECS team to suggest training areas/topics and boot camp speakers.
4. Support the CSOs in identifying domestic resource mobilization opportunities to pursue
5. Understand CSOs fundraising needs and support them in crafting a resource mobilization campaign plan with realistic and achievable goals. The plan will support the implementation of their domestic resource mobilization campaign over a four month period that will raise a targeted amount of funds both in cash and in-kind.
6. Hold regular coaching sessions with CSOs. These regular sessions will involve.

• Discussions with CSOs on progress of their fundraising campaigns
• Adapting their strategies, capitalizing on opportunities and addressing challenges with regard to their resource mobilization campaigns
• Coaching sessions with CSOs on the implementation of learning from their blended learning courses and boot camp webinar sessions

1. Support peer learning, twinning, and collaboration among CSOs
2. Facilitate monthly CSOs meetings and training in collaboration with the AGECS Team
3. Provide monthly progress reports and attend monthly boot camp progress meetings with the AGECS Team.
4. Facilitate a boot camp lesson learnt workshop with AGECs and its CSO partners.
5. Provide a comprehensive boot camp report with recommendations at the end of the boot camp period.

Timelines

The duration of the consultancy will be 40 working days (10 weeks) across the timelines between June and September, 2024.

Qualification and Experience

1. Advanced degree in social sciences, international development, project management
2. Minimum of 5 years of experience working in the development sector
3. Minimum of 5 years’ experience in capacitating CSOs on domestic resource mobilization through training, strategy development, coaching and mentoring.
4. Experience with online training and coaching will be an added advantage
5. Experience working with civil society organizations or other development partners will be an added advantage.
6. Experience working in diverse teams across the East Africa region will be an added advantage.

Functional competencies:

1. Excellent level of conceptual and analytical capacity.
2. Excellent training skills
3. Strong coaching and mentoring skills
4. A good understanding of domestic resource mobilization
5. Strong interpersonal, communication and, ability to collaborate with a team.
6. Proficient writing and reporting skills.
7. Ability to work under specified timelines.

Criteria for selection:

All submissions will be assessed on the following criteria:

1. Technical proposal 40%
2. Technical experience 30%
3. Value for Money 30%