Contract management to strengthen institutional and financial resilience of afro-feminist civil society organisations

The overall objective of this assignment is to improve the long-term structural resilience of selected civil society actors with a particular focus on institutional and financial resilience. Institutional resilience is defined as an organisation"s ability to remain operational amid political, financial or security-related changes. Illustrative improvements include clearer roles and responsibilities, improved internal processes, effective and sustainable leadership and succession planning, and updated policies for security, safeguarding and data protection grounded in context-specific risk assessments and realistic resource envelopes. Organisations strengthen administrative, financial and monitoring and evaluation systems, adopt appropriate digital tools, secure their communications and invest in staff training and capacity development that reflect fluctuating resources and long-term sustainability. Protection and security are enhanced through systematic risk analyses, security plans and digital, legal and physical protection mechanisms. Financial resilience refers to the stability and diversification of income sources. Organisations identify and develop new fundraising channels and strategies such as local donations, membership contributions, social enterprise models, regenerative and gender-lens investment, access to feminist philanthropic resources and partnerships with private actors. They build financial stability by establishing or increasing reserve funds and by improving access to multi-year and flexible funding. Financial management is strengthened through robust policies, budgeting and accounting systems as well as compliance and accountability mechanisms. The assignment is one mechanism of the programme to create conditions that enable organisations not only to respond to crises but to address them proactively, thereby countering regressive forces that undermine diversity, equality and human rights. To this end a Participatory Grant Council (PGC) composed of representatives of regional feminist organisations and GIZ will select 30 proposals centered on strengthening the institutional and financial sustainability of organisations and collectives. The selected organisations will then receive local subsidies and additional capacity development support to progressively build the commercial, administrative and legal capacities needed to manage future financing arrangements independently. Therefore, the first package of the requested services is to provide hands-on advice to the selected grantees on the implementation of the Local Subsidies in line with GIZ requirements, the second one is tailored external capacity development delivered by local service providers in areas identified through the selected proposals and organisational and capacity assessments. The contractor operationalises this approach through two work packages. In Work Package 1, the contractor conducts commercial and legal eligibility checks (KEP) for organisations selected to receive Local Subsidies, then contracts and manages 30 Local Subsidies in line with GIZ regulations and templates. The contractor disburses funds, advises recipients, manages and controls the proper use of funds, maintaining separate accounting and full documentation, preparing advances, settlements and disbursement requests. Continuous administrative and financial advice and monitoring are provided throughout, and all Local Subsidies are closed and settled in December. The learnings will be provided shared final learning event thereafter. In Work Package 2, the contractor conducts organisational and capacity assessments and then develops and manages contracts with local service providers (in the countries of the selected organisations) to deliver tailored capacity development to improve institutional and financial capacities in addition to the local subsidies. As a final step, the contractor must perform a final assessment to demonstrate measurable improvement in at least one of the two resilience dimensions - institutional or financial. General implementation measures include providing an implementation roadmap, holding an inception meeting, ensuring continuous coordination and communication with GIZ and partner organisations, and delivering an implementation report with a debriefing. All processes, contracting, disbursement, accounting and reporting comply with GIZ regulations for Local Subsidies and the principles of proper accounting, safeguarding, data protection and duty of care.