Development Tools and Resources for Association Capacity Development and Strategic Planning for Health Professional Associations
Request for Proposals

Closing Date & Time:  Friday, September 10th, 2010, 4:00 pm

Proposals must be submitted by e-mail in Word to:
Margarita Pardo mpardo@cna-aiic.ca

 
1.     INTRODUCTION

The Canadian Nurses Association’s (CNA) has been working in partnership with national nurses associations around the world for over 30 years.  The current CIDA-funded Strengthening Nurses, Nursing Networks and Associations Program (SNNNAP), works with eight international partners, providing coaching, tools and technical assistance to help them build their organizational, policy, and leadership capacities.  

The International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), the international body representing midwives globally, supports and strengthens professional associations of midwives. 
CNA and ICM have both identified the need to develop more effective tools to strengthen organizational and association capacity with their international partner/member associations.  To that end tools and resources have been developed for use by nursing and midwifery associations internationally.  However, both CNA and ICM recognize a need to further develop the tools and resources, to ensure they are easily accessible to global colleagues and to support organizational development and strengthening.   
Towards this end, CNA is seeking the assistance of a consultant to work with and build upon existing material developed by both CNA and ICM, to develop a user-friendly resource formatting and packaging, and to identify / develop additional tools and aids for their application. The resource package will tie into existing tools, such as the CNA Project Kit, strategic planning materials, and Association Capacity Development Framework. It will be designed to support CNA, ICM and their international partners to use organizational capacity assessments to strengthen organizational and strategic planning and association development. 

2.     BACKGROUND

Program context
CNA’s SNNNAP programme is in a 2007-2012 phase of funding through CIDA. The programme involves national nursing association partners in Burkina Faso, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Senegal, Vietnam and the Southern African Network of Nurses and Midwives.  This phase of the program is a continuation of previous phases dating back to 1997. 

CNA provides direct funding to support its partners through a long-term organizational capacity building process, carrying out activities to help the partners become sustainable, successful organizations.

The program aims to build the organizational management, administrative and governance capacity of these national nursing association and regional nursing network partners. It focuses on developing their capacities to:
•      contribute to health policy and health system strengthening;
•      improve nursing practice and care through regulation of the profession; and
•      build leadership capacity of nurses, increasing public recognition of the contribution that nursing makes to the health system and to population health.

Canadian nurses play a key role in the delivery of technical assistance for the program. Nurse mentors from CNA’s jurisdictional associations work with partners on issues related to health policy, advocacy, health systems development, nursing regulation and practice, leadership and organizational governance.
ICM represents more than 90 autonomous member organizations representing midwives, from all regions of the world.  Their mission is to strengthen member associations and to advance the profession of midwifery globally by promoting autonomous midwives as the most appropriate caregivers for childbearing women and in keeping birth normal, in order to enhance the reproductive health of women, and the health of their newborn and their families. ICM supports and advises its members – associations of midwives – to advance and promote midwifery within their own national contexts. 

Association Capacity
Capacity development can be defined as the process of enhancing, improving, and unleashing organizational performance, or as a form of change that focuses on improvements.  It is one of the central assumptions of CNA’s international health partnership program that through funding, coaching and providing tools and technical assistance to our partners, we can support our partners to enhance their effectiveness.  Their effectiveness may be related to project administration and management, organizational governance, or to the roles and functions of a health professional membership association – advancing the nursing profession, promoting good practice in nursing, and influencing the development of public and nursing policy. 

The development of capacity in these areas is not simple to address.  Results are not easily quantified and measured, and the link between capacity-building activities and results may not be straightforward.  However, organizational capacity is fundamental to the development of strong and vibrant associations that are able to attract members and address nursing and health systems issues. 

Existing resources at CNA and ICM
Over the past number of years CNA has invested considerable resources in developing tools for our partners to assess their capacity and identify areas for improvement, plan and manage their work, and identify and address strategic issues.  These include an association capacity development toolkit, a guide to carrying out environmental scanning, and resources for a strategic planning exercise. 

In 2003 ICM developed a Member Association Capacity Assessment Tool to enable its members to evaluate their capacity and develop strategies to reach their goals. 

The materials developed by our two organizations aim to serve a very similar purpose, and there is much overlap between them.  Beyond a review aimed at strengthening our resources and tools, the existing materials would benefit from review and revision to align the frameworks and their concepts, build consistency in form and content, and achieve a more user-friendly format for international nursing and midwifery associations.  We are aiming for the consolidation of our original and existing materials, bringing them into a cohesive and consistent single resource package which addresses the entire process of assessing and addressing internal capacity gaps and external contextual and strategic issues for health professional associations.    

 
3.     PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES

The consultant will develop a resource package which will provide guidance and specific tools to partner organizations, and which is derived from CNA’s and ICM’s existing association capacity assessment and strategic planning resources.  Once the initial draft is improved, the process will involve a consultation. Each organization will managed its own process, and feed the results into the final revision process.  
The steps involved in this may include the following steps that will include periodic consultation with CNA and ICM:
1.     Review relevant background material and existing resources of CNA and ICM and undertake any discussions necessary for clarification and information gathering.  This should include developing and administering a questionnaire or other data collection instrument for input from international partner associations.
2.     Identify concepts and elements need to strengthen the product.
3.     Make additions / changes, edit and reformat the existing tools as required to bring them into a single consistent, cohesive, user-friendly package in both electronic and hard copy formats.
4.     Ensure that documentation is revised to have a common look and feel to the existing CNA  Project Kit, common and consistent language (including a glossary of terms), is compact in scale and length, and edited to present the processes in clear language, easily accessible to non-native English speakers.
5.     Involve international partners in the process, and incorporate their feedback. 
6.     Submit progress reports to CNA as requested by the SNNNAP program manager.

4.     ANTICIPATED TIME FRAME

The consultant is expected to start by the 4th October 2010.  Following is a schedule for submission of deliverables, with a deadline of 7 March 2011 for final submission of all deliverables.   The consultation to be undertaken by ICM will take place after the second draft of materials is submitted, and will take approximately six weeks (January 1-February 14 2011).  Comments on all submissions will be returned to the selected consultant within one week. 

Review of CNA’s existing tools and documentation: 8th October 2010
First draft of partner questionnaire: 15th October 2010
First draft of edited versions of tools and resources: 19th November 2010
Second drafts of all deliverables:13rd December 2010
CNA / ICM review and member / stakeholder consultation: 15 December -31 January 2011
Review results of CNA / ICM consultation and incorporate recommendations:  7 February 2011
Final submission of all deliverables: 1 March 2011

 
5.     ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND REPORTING STRUCTURE

The consultant will report to the CNA program manager for SNNNAP, Tanya Salewski.  The program manager will be responsible for circulating all submissions to the program team, collecting and forwarding feedback and comments to the consultant. 

6.     REQUIRED COMPETENCIES

The consultant should have the following competencies:
•      Experience and expertise in developing and facilitating organizational capacity development, environmental scanning and strategic planning processes;
•      Excellent understanding of international development issues and the work of development organizations and donors, including CIDA;
•      Familiarity with health systems issues and the health sector in developing countries, in particular the countries in which the program works;
•      Ability to write well, using plain language which is easily understood by non-native English speakers

7.     EVALUATION CRITERIA

The proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
•      Degree to which consultant demonstrates required competencies
•      Experience of the consultant preparing similar work
•      Appropriateness of methodology
•      Ability of consultant to meet the desired time frame for completion of the work
•      Cost

8.     PROPOSAL REQUIREMENTS

Per diem rates must comply with CIDA’s policy on determination of fees for non-competitive service contracts.  The proposal should include the following components:

1.     Name and CV of consultant
2.     Availability
3.     Intended approach and methodology (two pages maximum)
4.     Detailed work plan (indicating level of effort) and timelines
5.     Sample(s) of recent work which is relevant to this project
6.     A budget

9.     DELIVERABLES

This consultancy will deliver a resource package for CNA and ICM and their international partners, to assist them to assess their organizational and association capacity.  Deliverables must include:

1.     A resource package for association capacity assessment, based on the original work of CNA and ICM.
2.     A resource package for environmental scanning based on the original work of CNA and ICM.
3.     A resource package for strategic planning based on the original work of CNA and ICM.
4.     A complete list of resources and references used in the editing and revision process.

10.  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY                                                                        

Ownership and copyright of all data, drafts and final products will be the sole and exclusive property of CNA and ICM.

11.  CONFLICT OF INTEREST              

A conflict of interest is any situation where an individual’s private interests may be incompatible or in conflict with his or her duties and responsibilities as personnel on this project. A conflict of interest exists whether or not the individual is actually swayed by the competing interest.

CNA staff, board members, their spouses, spousal equivalents, dependent children, parents or siblings are not eligible to bid on this project.

12.  OTHER

CNA will not fund the preparation, submission or presentation of proposals in response to this RFP.
CNA does not bind itself to accepting the lowest bid submitted in response to this RFP.
CNA does not bind itself to accepting any of the proposals received.
Only those proposals which are shortlisted/selected will be contacted. 

13.  TENDERING PROCEDURES AND CONTACT INFORMATION

Complete proposals (as outlined in section 8, above) should be prepared in Word and submitted electronically to Margarita Pardo at the following e-mail address: mpardo@cna-aiic.ca.

The deadline for submission of tenders is 4:00 pm, Friday September 10, 2010.