Terms of Reference: Endline Evaluation and Learning Journey – Local Leadership Labs
01 December 2025
CIVICUS is seeking a consultant(s) to conduct the endline evaluation of the Local Leadership Labs (LLL), comparing endline findings (February–March 2026) with the baseline completed in early 2024, assessing the initiative’s contribution to systemic change in locally led development, and developing the LLL Learning Journey.
Interested consultants should submit a proposal by email to Taís Siqueira ([email protected]) with the subject line: Proposal for LLL Endline Evaluation by 05 January 2026.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and should be received no later than 5 January 2026.
Introduction to CIVICUS
CIVICUS exists to defend people power. As a growing global alliance of over 15,000 members in 188 countries, we work together to monitor violations of basic civic freedoms, call out the perpetrators of violations and strengthen the power of people to organise by supporting a more accountable, effective and innovative civil society. We strive to promote excluded voices, especially from the Global South.
Local Leadership Labs (LLL)
The LLL is a three-year learning, influencing and convening initiative aimed at transforming the enabling environment for locally led development. The initiative focuses on political, technical, and behavioural barriers that prevent governments, donors, and other stakeholders from meaningfully recognizing, including, and resourcing diverse grassroots civil society actors.
Across Southeast Africa and Southeast Asia, six convening partners lead regional, national, and subnational Labs that enable sustained safe dialogue processes as well as inclusive co-creation spaces so that policies, practices, and enablement approaches of different stakeholders are more joined up and responsive to the lived experiences, priorities and asks of diverse local civil society actors. Besides enhancing reciprocal accountability, in the end this process wishes to positively impact the relevance and accessibility of resources, support infrastructure and solidarity available to local civil society actors.
The initiative’s phases—Discovery, Ideation, and Action—ran between December 2023 and December 2025.
Purpose of the Endline Evaluation
The purpose of the endline evaluation is to:
- Assess the extent of change in the enabling environment, funder commitments, partner capacities, relationships, and ecosystem behaviours compared to baseline conditions (as of early 2024).
- Evaluate CIVICUS’s plausible contribution to observed changes using the Theory of Change, acknowledging that multiple actors influence systemic changes.
- Capture intended and unintended outcomes, including behavioural spillover, strengthening the initiative’s learning agenda.
- Provide actionable recommendations for any future iteration of LLL or related CIVICUS influencing strategies.
This evaluation must combine evidence from the baseline, process learning during implementation, partner reporting, ecosystem monitoring, and new primary data collection.
Evaluation Scope
- Full initiative duration: 1 April 2023 – 31 March 2026
- All six convening partners, including regional, national, sub-national and trans-local dimensions
- CIVICUS global influencing and ecosystem-level work
- Geographic scope is Southeast Asia and Southeast Africa.
Purpose of the LLL Learning Journey
- To design a LLL Learning Journey, inspired by the CSF Learning Journey, rooted in solidarity, meaningful participation, radical inclusion, and reflexivity.
- Facilitate meaningful engagement with partners, funders and staff to gather their experiences, feedback, barriers, and ideas for improvement.
- Synthesize insights, lessons learned, and recommendations
- Document the process and produce a visually appealing final product.
Methodology
The consultant(s) should propose an evaluation methodology consistent with:
- The evaluation and learning journey purpose and help answer or achieve them.
- The Theory of Change and its contribution to change
- Outcomes Harvesting / qualitative contribution analysis
- Acknowledgement of small sample sizes and complexity
Because there are multiple actors and environmental factors that contributed to the change, we are pursuing an endline approach that allows us to both compare the situation at the beginning of the project to the end as well as not assume all change is due to our project. To do this, we will use our theory of change to map deduce our plausible contribution to observed change. As our numbers will be too small for statistical analysis, we are looking for consultants to help us map our theory of change with desired changes to evidence and logical argument how the programme contributes to the observed changes. We need a method that allows for both intentional and unintentional consequences (behavioural spillover) that may be positive, negative or a mix in both the direct targets of the programme and others in the ecosystem.
Deliverables
- Conduct a short desk review of existing reports, grant proposal, project notes, theory of change, project objectives, draft indicators and other related project information to inform the report.
- Conduct online interviews with two national and two sub-national convening partners and other relevant actors, if needed.
- Endline evaluation report, including methodology and limitations, baseline–endline comparison, contribution to change analysis, findings against each objective, case examples of meaningful change, positive/negative/unintended outcomes and recommendations for future LLL or similar programmes
- Ecosystem influencing endline update aligned with baseline categories:
- Degree of alignment with CIVICUS messaging
- Assessment of CIVICUS’s plausible influence
- Updated ecosystem actor map, and endline data of most relevant donors (bilaterals, multilaterals and philanthropic organisations) and related frameworks, policies, commitments and state of implementation.
5. Slide deck for external communication: a concise presentation summarizing key findings.
6. LLL Learning Journey, a visually appealing product including outcome stories, process overview, and lessons learned. Please refer to the Solidarity Fund Learning Journey for inspiration.
Knowledge & Experience
- Technical knowledge, skills and expertise in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) concepts and approaches
- Experience with endline evaluation. Preferred, experience with small numbers helping us to use indicators that will provide check assumptions and provide evidence towards our Theory of Change.
- Experience with developmental evaluation approaches and behavioural spillover is advantageous, e.g. Outcomes Harvesting
- Programme and/or evaluation experience in the international development, civil society ideally with field experience in Southeast Africa and/or Southeast Asia
- Knowledge of major global frameworks relevant to the locally led development and enabling civil society change agendas such as Paris Declaration (2005), the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (2011), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2015), the Grand Bargain (2016), the Grand Bargain 2.0 (2021), the OECD-DAC Recommendation on Enabling Civil Society in Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Assistance (2021), and the Locally Led Adaptation Principles (2021)
- Strong background in developing research tools (including online surveys and focus group/interview guides)
- Strong analytical skills to support both qualitative and quantitative research
- Excellent writing skills and ability to be concise and clear – providing actionable analysis and recommendations in English with other UN languages an advantage.
- Ability to communicate and meaningfully engage with diverse stakeholders through inclusive and participatory MEL approaches.
- Availability during the hours of 2 – 5pm (Johannesburg time zone)
- Working with SharePoint and Teams (all work will be required to use Teams and SharePoint and if needed CIVICUS’s Miro account). All interviews, data, graphic files should be created and stored through our approved IT systems. Consultants will need to enable 2FA/MFA to improve security of these accounts. CIVICUS’s IT will support consultants if needed to enable these security mechanisms and install needed software on their computers.
Estimated Workdays and Timeframe
Estimated 25–30 workdays between 15 January and 20 March 2026. Please note that the typical CIVICUS consultancy fee ranges from USD 300–350 per day.
Application process
Your application should include the following (no longer than 12 pages) in ONE merged PDF document:
- Motivation, technical approach, workplan for this consultancy
- Example of previous endline/learning journey work.
- Capabilities and experience, including CVs and two contactable references. Financial quotation, including your proposed daily remuneration rate in US$, number of workdays envisioned for this consultancy and any additional costs.
Interested consultants should submit a proposal for the anticipated contract by email to Tais Siqueira at [email protected]. Applications should be received not later than 5 January 2026.
Please read the application process carefully and follow all steps exactly. Only applicants submitting the application in the required format and components will be considered.