SI Seeks Data Collection Services in Mali

Project Background

Social Impact (SI) is a Washington, DC-area international development management consulting firm. SI’s mission is to improve the effectiveness of international development programs to improve people’s lives. SI provides a full range of management consulting, technical assistance, and training services to strengthen international development programs, organizations, and policies. SI provides services globally in monitoring and evaluation, strategic planning, project, and program design, organizational capacity building, and gender and social analysis. SI services crosscut all development sectors including democracy and governance, health and education, the environment, and economic growth. SI’s clients include US government agencies such as USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the US Department of State; bilateral donors; multilateral development banks; foundations; and non-profits.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) /Mali Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Platform is a five-year activity awarded to Social Impact, Inc. (SI) to provide technical and advisory services to design and carry out various monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities for USAID/Mali. The contract has 3 major components.

Third-Party Monitoring (TPM);
Evaluation Services and Surveys; and
Collaborating, Learning, and Adaptive Management and Communication Services.

As part of the TPM, the SI team has been tasked to develop an Assumptions and Risk Tracking System (ARTS) to provide USAID with a contextual understanding of Mali’s ever-changing trajectory to adapt to the U.S. Government’s development and humanitarian assistance in Mali. This requires examining data from the national to the commune level, using indicators that measure the state of wellbeing and reporting when communes are getting better or worse under each prioritized scenario. With this information, USAID/Mali will review its preparation and mitigation efforts taken to date through its programs and adjust and adapt efforts to better position activities to the changing situation and needs. As part of this effort, the activity will monitor trigger indicators based on three possible scenarios: 1) Mali’s political transition, 2) Crisis and resilience, and 3) Pandemic and socio-economic conditions.

Service Explanation

SI seeks to engage a data collection firm for the ARTS surveys (hereinafter referred to as “subcontractor”). The resulting subcontract will be a firm fixed-price contract with an expected period of performance of November 2024 to March 2025. The initial contract will cover one round of the survey in late 2024 (N=2250), with the possibility of extending the contract to include additional nationally-representative surveys on a quarterly basis based on performance. These specifications describe the technical requirements for data collection for the ARTS survey.

The SI team will lead the design of the survey, which will be built around a nationally representative survey. SI is looking for a firm capable of conducting a telephone survey using a pre-identified list of phone numbers, random digit dialing, or a similar method. The subcontractor will be responsible for identifying and training call center supervisors and interviewers, planning and executing all tasks required for data collection, and operationalizing various quality assurance processes before, during and after data collection.

SI requests that all bidders examine the specific requirements contained in this Request for Proposals (RFP) and prepare responses pursuant to the terms of this RFP. All questions related to the RFP are to be submitted by October 15, 2024. The deadline to submit proposals (including a budget) is November 1, 2024. Please refer to the RFP for a detailed documentation of project background and scope of work.

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