Request for Proposals for a learning partner to develop a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning system for Oak Foundation’s India Programme

About Oak Foundation

Oak Foundation commits its resources to address issues of global, social, and environmental concern, particularly those that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged. Through our grant-making, we support others to make the world a safer, fairer, and more sustainable place to live. With offices in Europe, India, and North America, we make grants to organisations in approximately 40 countries worldwide.

The India Programme supports efforts to sustainably improve the lives of marginalised people in West Bengal, a state in the eastern region of India on the Bay of Bengal. These include workers in the unorganised sector, Indigenous communities known as Adivasis, and adult and child migrants, whose entitlements and rights have been neglected for decades.

Our primary grant-making focus centres on two sub-regions within West Bengal where all three groups live – the tea gardens of North Bengal and the Sundarbans coastal region.

Our secondary grant-making focus is on the other districts in West Bengal that are home to one or more of the three priority groups – unorganised workers, Indigenous communities, and migrants. The India Programme has the following strategic pillars that support and promote:

• access to entitlements and services
• access to justice
• amplification of community voice
• strengthening of systems
• sustainable livelihoods and climate resilience

Grant Portfolio

As of January 2023, the portfolio comprised of 32 grants in West Bengal, of which 38% are focused on the Sundarbans and 22% in tea garden districts. The rest are in the other districts of the state. The grants address the root causes for inequities and injustice. They aim to build active voice and leadership of the primary constituents and stakeholders.

Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) within the India Programme

The India Programme recognises the need to understand Oak’s contribution to change through its grant-making and foster collective learning with grantee partners to move towards the desired results. This learning will enable Oak and its partners to understand:

• what Oak and its partners are doing and how well we are doing it
• whether the work of the partners is resulting in desired change (or not) and why
• what is taking place in the wider context in which we are working, and where we need to see changes to improve the lives of those most in need

Oak Foundation developed a theory of change with a learning partner in 2021. Through extensive workshops with Oak partners, followed by field validation and curation of baseline information, the knoweldge partner developed a programme level theory of change, along with nested theories of change corresponding to the primary and secondary focus areas. The agency also conducted two capacity building workshops to orient partners on theory of change development and outcome harvesting processes.

Oak Foundation is searching for a learning partner that will facilitate the grantee partners to generate evidence against the outcomes that start to materialise at multiple levels. The agency will also support the grantee partners to identify the contributing or inhibiting factors influencing the outcomes. This will primarily be done using outcome harvesting.

Scope of Work for MEL partner

Oak Foundation is searching for an agency with extensive experience on measuring and evaluation in complex settings, using outcome harvesting for strategic learning. This agency will facilitate the outcome harvesting process, and perform the following roles:

1. Familiarise and understand the draft theories of change and fine tune the list of indicators as per the outcome areas.
2. Refine data collection methods and tools with partners to initiate the outcome harvesting process.
3. Support partners during outcome harvesting on data collection, cleaning, and analysis through a learning platform.
4. Facilitate partners to elicit insights on programme approaches and relevance from relevant communities and other stakeholders.
5. Provide capacity building support to MEL focal points of partners on theory of change, outcome harvesting processes, and MEL frameworks.
6. Synthesise information from outcome harvesting processes and benchmarking of progress against baseline information (where available) on a yearly basis.
7. Identify emerging issues and gaps in the grant portfolio.
8. Analyse and present informaton from the outcome harvesting processes vis-a-vis sector trends and other donor driven initiatives.
9. Present visual data on the cumulative status of the grant portfolio once every six months.

Conract duration

To ensure continuity in operations and shared understanding among Oak Foundation, its grantee partners, and the knowledge partner, this assignment will be for a multi-year period. However, Oak Foundation will conduct an annual review at the end of each year on processes, deliverables, and factor in grantee partner feedback before retaining the services of the organisation for the subsequent year.

Organisations meeting the following qualifications/experience are encouraged to apply:

• experience of working with grant-making organisations (international and national), civil society, and grassroots movements;
• strong learning facilitation skills;
• strong evaluation skills with complexity-aware methods, particularly with outcome harvesting;
• experience of facilitating outcome harvesting with a cohort of grantees;
• understand and use different sources of data and insights;
• experience helping groups to engage with learning from monitoring, evaluation, and direct experience for self-reflection, programme adapation, and strategy development;
• knowledge of local context and cultural norms; and
• experience and familiarity of working on all or at least two priority populations of the India Programme – unorganised sector workforce, Indigenous communities, and migrants (adult and child).

Interested organisations/agencies/consultant teams are requested to apply with the following to Sabrina Mendes at sabrina.mendes@oakfnd.org:

• Qualifications of the agency including major assignments of relevant nature undertaken (3 pages)
• A brief (3-4 pages) on the process and methodology to be adopted for this assignment
• Key staff members and their profile (1 page each)
• Evidence of relevant experience. Agencies may share the scope of work undertaken of any related previous experience.
• 2 References.

Deadline for submission: 24 March 2023