Consultant (Financial Sustainability)

1. Introduction and Background

Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a leading national child rights organization seeks services of an expert consultant/firm for commissioning organizational sustainability evaluation. Over the two decades, SPARC has been active in the domain of child rights through a range of outreach activities including awareness raising, advocacy and research coupled with need based service delivery. The organization has also been engaged marginalized groups which impact children’s lives directly or indirectly that includes parents, youth, young women, etc.  The evaluation is expected to carry out in the middle of the year 2016.

2. Purpose of the Evaluation

The  purpose  of  this  study  is  to  assess the existing financial sustainability strategic planning of the organization and to provide  a  financial  road  map. The purpose is also to evaluate the environmental, collateral, inherent, and social factors of financial sutainability and financial risks in order to minimize financial liabilities by presenting concrete recommendations for SPARC that ensure a sutainable financial future for all its key programs that fit into its vision, mission and mandate of advocating child rights and child protection policies.

The results of the evaluation will be used by the organization for future organizational improvement and financial strategic planning.

3. Objectives of the Evaluation

The organization expects the following objectives to be achieved through the proposed evaluation:

1.      To assess financial requirements and current sources of income at a level which will ensure day to day management of the organization and its full exploitation along with the scale of gap between the two if any.

2.      To identify key financial trends and indicators of financial resilience that can help make financial projections and road map for the next 10 years. Trends can be identified through internal financial data

3.      To review existing Stretegic Plan and identify objective assumptions accordingly that will enable the organization to make policy decisions and strategic choices related to financial growth and stability to achieve a stronger long term financial position

4.      To review the status of endowment fund and organization’s asset management strategies

5.      To measure the extent of grants prospecting, fund raising, diversification and the organization’s capacity to mange larger funds and sustain its key programs with or without any ongoing external support

6.      To assess the working methods and professional qualification of the staff as well as training and backstopping needs.

7.      To assess the level of staff satisfaction and commitment

8.      To assess the level of optimization of human resource and other administrative cost and its relevance to the projects’ needs

9.      To assess the level of partner (local/foreign donor/government supported offices) satisfaction and commitment

10.  Use results and key findings of the evaluation to provide a financial road map and to formulate concrete recommendations along the lines of the Ansoff Matrix for increased efficiency, effectiveness, empowerment resulting into financial sustainability management of all the programs of the organization, specially at the stage of gradual withdrawal or exit.

4. Scope of the Evaluation

The selected consultant team will work closely with the organization‘s team and under the consultation with the organization’s Board of Directors:

•        The evaluation will cover the organization’s  activities for the past five years till date. This should encompass a desk review of what the organization was, how it has evolved and sustained till 2017 and what are the most sustained activities till now.

•        The desk review should be followed by interviews with the Board of Directors of the organization. These intervies should be completed before initiating the evaluation and preparing stratgic plan and financial road map.

•        The geographical scope of the evaluation will be ICT (Islamabad Capitol Territory), Punjab, KPK and Sindh. While the main emphasis should be on measuring financial sustainability required for having desired outcomes, results and outputs and to link them all with the program sustainabilty.

The evaluation should include findings, lessons learned and recommendations in the following areas:

•        Efficiency: An analysis of how efficiently financial planning and program implementation are carried out? Are management arrangements of the organization such that efficient execution and implementation with suitable number of human resource is guaranteed in the current financial situation?

•        Relevance and attainability of the objectives: Whether the organization’s financial management system addresses the identified needs to ensure sufficient focus on specific issues? Are all the organizational objectives still relevant? Is the finacial problem addressed still a major problem?

•        Whether the ongoing programs contribute to long term financial sustainability of the organization

•        Sustainability of results and benefits. Have the measures been put in place to create alternate and continuous financial support system in future?

•        Are the initiated activities likely to continue after donor funding ends? Do the beneficiaries accept the projects, are they willing to continue? Can some if not all the activities become self-sustaining financially? Will the results continue after the project funding?

•        Effectiveness: Is the organization achieving satisfactory progress toward its stated objectives in the given budget?

•        Problems and financial constraints encountered during implementation?

5. Methodology

§  To undertake documents review and understand the deliverables;

§  To develop a detailed methodology in line with the objectives of the evaluation

•        Building on international best practice, develop the instruments, sample size and methods for assessment in consultation with the organization that examine quality of care broadly defined, and other related indicators, such as children‘s/parents‘/communities‘/funding partners‘ satisfaction and staff morale.

•        Maintain the schedule agreed on during negotiations for carrying out the evaluative surveys expeditiously.

•        Ensure that surveyors are properly trained and supervised technically by specialist, design and implement a quality assurance mechanism for data collection and entry acceptable to the organization.

•        Enter and clean the data using best-practice techniques and prepare the data for analysis, including getting the data in a state where the data could be made publicly available on a Web site.

•        Analyze the data and prepare a concise and user-friendly report for the organization and other stakeholders, including the private sector partners. Carry out such additional analysis as the stakeholders reasonably request to make use of the data.

•        Develop an explicit financial sutainability plan, acceptable to the organization, and for the decission makers.

•        Present the data during meetings and workshops set up by the organization to disseminate the results of the study.

6. Deliveries

The production of the Inception and final Evaluation Report will be the responsibility of the consultant/firm covering all the aspects outlined in the TORs. The final report will be;

·         Produced in English language and is comprehensible

·         A clear overview of the current financial situation of the organization

·         Assessment of the adequacy of financial policies

·         Assessment of potential or new source of income

·         SWOT analysis of organization’s funding options

·         Revised and Expanded Strategic Plan on a larger scale

·         A financial road map

·         There should be one inception, one draft and one final report after incorporating feedback from the organization.

·         The team will be liable to submit at least 02 hard copies and 01 electronic copy of the final report by the agreed deadline.

The report should preferably be structured as mentioned below. All parts should be clearly distinguished from each other and of sufficient quality.

·         Cover Page

·         Table of contents

·         An executive summary that can be used as a documents in its own right. It should include the major findings of the evaluation and summarize conclusions and recommendations

·         The objectives of the evaluation

·         A justification of the methods and techniques used (including relevant underlying values and assumptions, theories) with a justification of the selections made

·         Recommendations should be presented separately. Recommendations on increased efficiency, effectiveness, empowerment, sustainability should be practical and if necessary be divided up for various actors or stakeholders and include guidelines of how they can be implemented by the organization.

·         Report annexes

7. Consultant/Firm Requirements

The consultant team must possess the following competencies:

• The team leader should hold atleast Masters Degree in Finance and Strategic Planning related subjects and should have over ten years of demonstrated experience and acknowledged expertise in financial resilience requirements, organizational development and strategic planning of a child right based organization.
• Understanding of the sustainability issues of a non-profit organization.

·         Proven experience of using participatory tools as the means of data collection.

·         Conversant with application of cross cutting themes like gender mainstreaming, M & E and child protection.

·         Excellent analytical and report writing skills.

·         An independent position with regard to all stakeholders.

8. Roles and Responsibilities

The Organization:

SPARC will provide technical support to the evaluators including access to relevant documents;

The Evaluators:

• Share tentative timeline with the organization allowing its staff to allocate certain time period for facilitating the team
• All documents and data collected will be treated as confidential and used solely to facilitate analysis and will not be shared or disclosed without prior permission from the or KNH .
• All the information pertinent to the evaluation process should be communicated through emails and minuted meetings.

Further details will be laid down in the engagement contract.

09. Time frame

The timeframe for the evaluation and the deliverables (final report) would be six weeks.

Shortlisted applicants will be notified in writing and invited to present their proposals in a meeting.

(The organization reserves the right to hire consultant for fee only)