Context:
The Crisis Response Fund (CRF) at CIVICUS is part of the Lifeline Embattled CSO Fund, a consortium of 7 civil society organizations issuing two types of grants:
- Advocacy grants: designed to support partners to implement advocacy activities in the face of a recent crisis or emerging opportunities to open up civic space, particularly in issues related to freedom of assembly and association.
- Resiliency grants: designed to support civil society organizations to implement proactive activities around improving their resiliencies and ability to mitigate against threats, rather than be reactive.
Importantly, while recognizing the critical issues faced by the LGBTI community, the Lifeline grants do not cover this thematic area because of our sister grant, Dignity for All, a consortium of CSOs working to respond to civic space issues for the LGBTI community. We work closely with Dignity for All and refer partners who need resourcing to them in light of our own limited funding. Normally, the Lifeline grants do not cover Freedom of expression issues (i.e. the targeting of journalists, bloggers or those detained or harassed for expressing their opinions) but in light of the COVID-19 pandemic the Lifeline consortium CSOs have expanded their criteria to allow for funding for freedom of expression restrictions for covering the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing surveillance, detainment and harassment of journalists, bloggers and activists online. Lastly, Freedom House and Frontline Defenders are the only two consortium members who are able to grant to individual activists needing emergency assistance. All other consortium members, including CIVICUS, provide subgrants to organizations, movements or collectives of civil society actors – these do not need to be formal or registered. The CRF offers funding for a limited time period (3-6 months) with grants averaging US$10000,00 for individual CSOs/movements and US$20000,00 for consortia. On average the CRF gives 5-6 grants per quarter (up to 24 grants per year, sometimes more). There are also no geographic restrictions on access to the CRF and the team relies on translation software to engage with partners based in other countries.
The CRF team has identified as key targets for its resourcing: grassroots, women- and youth-led, “informal”, and protest movements. Regional diversity is also an important objective of the team.
The scope of the Crisis Response Fund, along with its protocol is available at www.civicus.org/crf.
Needs Assessment:
As the Crisis Response Fund plans for the next 3 years of implementation, critical gaps and opportunities have emerged that can enhance our subgranting and support to partners. Much of this work has been done internally to refine certain systems, including clear defining of roles, improving outreach to grassroots partners, and effective grant tracking. However, there remains a need to:
- Conduct an annual review of the subgranting of the CRF, including:
- Collecting survey data from recipients of the CRF from June 2019 to June 2020 to assess how responsive the CRF team has been to the needs of partners;
- Analyzing narrative reports and applications received in this period to track emerging trends in civic space from subgrant recipients and assess whether there is a gap between the projects funded and the emerging trends in the applications;
- Interview select subgrantees, CRF team members, and select CIVICUS staff to expand on the findings in exercises (a) and (b);
- Collate findings into an reflection report for the period concerned;
- Finalize report, including layout and design and copy-editing following final comments from CRF Leal and;
- Develop suggestions on how such an annual reflection process can be institutionalized.
Suggested days required: 30 working days
- Review internal systems for grant-management life cycle, including:
- Reviewing all existing systems from receipt of applications to closure of the grant to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities; and
- Recognizing the sensitive nature of the data with which the team works, make recommendations on how to improve these systems for more effective grantmaking.
Suggested days required: 10 working days
- An additional, desirable activity includes:
- Identifying 3-4 examples of exemplary grants implemented by partners that may offer guidance to prospective applicants (language and diversity is critical here)
- Develop multimedia case studies (video, infographics, core tools), with consent of partners, for profiling on the CRF webpage.
- Review with individual human rights defenders on how effective the referral process has worked to other sister mechanisms, like Dignity for All.
Suggested days required: 10 working days
How to apply:
Consultants are requested to submit:
- Full Curriculum Vitae
- Proposed outline of methodology to carry out consultancy, including timeline
- Proposed consultancy daily rate
- Three professional references, with at least one from a past consultancy assignment
Applications are due by 5 July 2020; please submit applications to [email protected] with subject line “Consultancy: Learning & Reflection – Crisis Response Fund”
The maximum total consultancy offer is US$4400.00