Background and Context
Founded in 1956, the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) is a humanitarian organisation working to protect and assist people affected by conflict and displacement around the world. It works in close to 30 countries supporting people at every stage of displacement; from acute crisis and exile through to settlement, integration and return.
DRC is seeking expressions of interest from firms with demonstrable experience in longitudinal evaluation to serve as a long-term learning and evaluation team for a multi-year programme focused on locally led humanitarian response across Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Uganda and Kenya.
This is an Expression of Interest (EOI) stage. Respondents are not asked to submit a full technical or financial proposal at this point. The purpose of this EOI is to identify a shortlist of qualified firms who will subsequently be invited to respond to a full Terms of Reference in a second stage of the process.
Rationale for a Developmental Evaluation Approach
DRC is commissioning a developmental evaluation (DE) rather than a formative or summative evaluation. The DE is positioned as an impartial and longitudinal evaluation spanning the lifetime of the programme, with the aim of understanding the patterns of change as it is created and established and building a deeper analysis of the unique dynamics that drive it.
This approach is warranted because:
- Genuinely evaluative questions – about whether the programme is achieving what it claims, and where it is falling short – need to be asked at a broad enough level to leave space for patterns and trends to be detected as they emerge, so they can also function as course-correction mechanisms rather than only retrospective judgements.
- The programme makes an explicit claim to be doing something different from conventional humanitarian financing. The evaluation needs to be honest and rigorous enough to test whether that claim actually holds, rather than assuming it.
- The DE has an explicit accountability function: it is expected to hold the progamme management team, to account for how well they are delivering on the programme’s mandate – which requires an evaluation team structurally independent enough to do so credibly.
- The operating context volatile and conflict-affected, meaning the programme’s model must be able to adapt to shifting conditions across its life cycle
The DE consulting firm is expected to function as a critical friend, impartial evaluator, and real-time sense-maker; surfacing patterns, tensions, and unintended consequences early enough for the programme to adapt, while ultimately contributing to an overall assessment of its success and impact.
Scope
The evaluation covers the full lifetime of the progamme, from establishment through to eventual exit or wind-down. It is expected to run in phases aligned to the programme’s own lifecycle, with exact phase boundaries confirmed as the programme’s roadmap develops.
The thematic scope spans six areas:
- Relevance and community-defined effectiveness: whether supported programming is effective from the perspective of the communities it serves
- Programme management: how well the management team are delivering on their mandate
- Adaptive learning and course correction: whether the programme functions as a genuine learning system, capable of changing in response to evidence, community feedback and shifting context
- Contribution to the wider humanitarian system: in what ways and under what conditions the programme strengthens local humanitarian systems and contributes to a more equitable humanitarian architecture in the region
- Technical Assistance: how the programme’s technical assistance offer is experienced by local actors and what its contribution to the overall programme effectiveness is
Indicative evaluation questions will be shared with shortlisted candidates at the second stage. The questions are deliberately broad to leave space for patterns to be detected as they emerge and will be revisited periodically over the life of the engagement.
Nature of the Engagement
This is a multi-year engagement, expected to run until at least the end of 2028, structured in phases aligned to the programme’s lifecycle. In addition to the core longitudinal evaluation function, the selected consulting firm will have the option to provide flexible, drawdown-based technical MEAL support for discrete pieces of work that fall outside the core DE function.
The DE consulting firm will have standing access to the programme governance meetings as an observer, and will produce a range of outputs across the engagement, including short-form real time learning briefs tied to governance milestones, periodic developmental evaluation reports, facilitated sensemaking sessions with governance bodies; annual synthesis reports; a mid-term review and a final exit-phase evaluation
Required profile
DRC is looking for a team that can demonstrate the following:
- Proven experience designing and delivering developmental evaluations over multi-year, longitudinal engagements, ideally of localisation initiatives, or adaptive governance mechanisms or programme accountability assignments.
- Substantive expertise in localisation and locally led response, including familiarity community-based structures
- Strong conflict sensitivity and remote/hybrid research methods, given access constraints in Sudan, sustained over a multi-year engagement.
- Credibility with, and ideally prior working relationships with, civil society and community-based responders and/or diaspora networks, particularly in Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, Uganda and Kenya.
- Facilitation skills suited to multi-stakeholder governance settings
- Continuity mechanisms (e.g. core team retention, institutional memory practices) to sustain a credible longitudinal evaluation across programme phases and potential staff turnover.
- Access to a broader technical MEAL “bench” beyond the core embedded DE team, able to be drawn down at short notice for specific – bidders should indicate the range of additional expertise available (e.g. MEAL tool design, Theory of Change facilitation, rapid assessment) and typical mobilisation timeframes, distinct from the continuity requirements set out above for the core evaluative team.
Independence Requirements
Given the DE’s accountability function, the selected consulting firm must be structural independent of DRC’s operational activities. Any actual or potential conflicts of interests in relation to DRC or DRC-hosted programmes must be disclosed at the EOI stage.
EOI Selection Criteria
Expressions of interest will be reviewed against the following criteria. This shortlisting process is intended to ensure an objective basis for selecting which candidates are invited to proceed to the full tender stage:
- Demonstrated experience in developmental or longitudinal evaluation, ideally in humanitarian or localisation contexts (30%)
- Relevant thematic expertise in locally led humanitarian response and familiarity with community-based structures in complex, conflict-affected contexts (25%)
- Team composition: evidence of regional expertise, and inclusion of local or national researchers (25%)
- Demonstrated capacity to sustain a multi-year longitudinal engagement, including continuity mechanisms and access to a broader MEAL technical bench (20%)
Shortlisted candidates will be notified and provided with the full Terms of Reference for the second stage of the process.
How to Express Interest
Interested firms are invited to submit a brief expression of interest comprising of:
- A short summary of relevant experience in developmental evaluation and locally led humanitarian programming
- A brief note on proposed team composition, including what regional expertise would be represented on the team with CVs attached for key positions.
- An indication of capacity to sustain a multi-year longitudinal engagement through to the end of 2028 and access to a broader MEAL technical bench
- A statement of any actual or potential conflicts of interest in relation to DRC or DRC-hosted programmes
- Two references from comparable longitudinal or programme-accountability evaluation assignments
How to apply
EOIs should be submitted to [email protected] 20th August 2026 1700hrs EAT*.* Shortlisted candidates will be provided with the full Terms of Reference and invited to submit a detailed technical and financial proposal in the second stage of the process.
Questions about this EOI may be directed to [email protected]
Disclaimer: This invitation to express interest and the subsequent EOI is not part of the contracting process, and do not in any way qualify as a contractual arrangement.
More Information
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