Evaluation Consultant at the National Democratic Institute (NDI)

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartIsan, nongovernmental organization supporting democratic institutions and practices in every region of the world for more than three decades. Since its founding in 1983, NDI and its local partners have worked to establish and strengthen political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.

We invite applications from suitably qualified candidates to fill the vacant position below:

Job Title: Evaluation Consultant

Location: Abuja
Job Function: International
Department: Central & West Africa

Scope of Work

• NDI is seeking a Consultant to lead an evaluation. The Evaluator will have experience conducting evaluations in the area of democracy and governance.
• The ideal consultant will have experience evaluating programs focused on one or more of the following areas: elections monitoring, advocacy, political inclusion, conflict prevention/mitigation and organizational development.
• The evaluation will take place in January 2018 in Abuja, Nigeria.
• The Evaluator will lead a three member evaluation team, which will include two content experts, who will be supported by an Abuja based on context expert and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) local NDI staff. 
• NDI is in the fourth year of its program.
• The program began in April 1, 2014 and concludes in March 31, 2019, with the potential for  extension. The evaluation was originally intended to be a mid-term.
• However due to delays with implementation, particularly in year three of the program, the evaluation has been scheduled for January 2018.

Background and Objective

• Nigeria’s 2015 elections were challenging due to political tensions and a fragile security situation. Fissures in the ruling party at the time, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP, and the emergence of an opposition coalition the All Progressive Congress, also meant that the elections were hotly contested.
• At the same time, Boko Haram extremists continued attacks against civilians in some northern states and criminality was on the rise in the Niger Delta and Middle Belt.
• In the midst of these challenges, the polls provided an opportunity for civil society organizations (CSOs) to enhance the role of citizens in promoting credible elections and reducing the potential for violence.
• To respond to the immediate challenges of the 2015 election and promote sustainable long-term CSO engagement in electoral and political processes, the Electoral Empowerment of Civil Society Project (EECSP) Consortium is implementing a five-year initiative to:
  • Improve impartial observation, accurate reporting on, and recording of election vote totals by domestic electoral observers during and after the 2015 election cycle;
  • Improve management within Nigerian partner CSOs; and
  • Increase participation by marginalized groups in Nigerian political processes.
• The EECSP Consortium partners are the National Democratic Institute (NDI), World Learning (WL), Search for Common Ground (SFCG), and the Center for Democratic Development – Ghana (CDD-Ghana).
• The Consortium is led by NDI. For all three objectives, NDI is collaborating CDD-Ghana for Objective One; and WL and SFCG for Objective Three.
• The program is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID).

Purpose of the Evaluation
The evaluation is intended to promote programmatic learning and inform course correction. The evaluation will:

• Identify evidence of programming strengths, weaknesses, emerging opportunities and lessons learned
• Determine the program’s progress toward its strategic objectives
• Make recommendations for improving and/or amending program approach
• ensuring that the program team captures quality data that can contribute to an external final evaluation of the program

The Following will be Assessed:

• The extent to which the EECSP program prevented and/or mitigated electoral violence
• The quality of advocacy conducted by NDI’s local partners
• The extent to which partner CSO advocacy has advanced the inclusion of marginalized populations including women, youth, and persons with disabilities (PWDs)
• The extent to which NDI’s elections monitoring partner has increased the knowledge of key electoral stakeholders’ of advanced election monitoring methodology
• The methodology being used by NDI to provide organizational development technical assistance in the areas of human resources, procurement, operations, financial management, and organizational governance

Evaluation Criteria
The evaluation will use the OCED/DAC criteria to evaluate:

• The effectiveness of the program in achieving its intermediate results, as well as any unintended results emerging at midterm
• The strategic efficiency of the program in responding to risks and opportunities within the operating environment
• The relevance of the program to the original and current development problems at midterm; and
• The potential sustainability and impact of the program results
• The lead Evaluator will be responsible for the design and planning of the evaluation, including: refining or proposing a methodological approach, data collection instrumentation, developing analytical frameworks, providing orientation for the evaluation team, guiding the preliminary data analysis and drafting the final report. NDI will be involved with design, planning and logistics, but the lead evaluator is required to provide significant and overall leadership and direction, as well having the final responsibility for the major evaluation duties and deliverables.
• To prepare for the evaluation, NDI’s program and M&E teams developed lines of inquiry. The Evaluator will review the lines of inquiry and provide suggestions and revisions as appropriate.
• The Evaluator will review existing program data relevant to the program’s indicators and critical assumptions. The following will be reviewed:
  • NDI Technical Proposal: Electoral Empowerment of Civil Society Program RFA-620-14-000002 to show the project strategy before implementation of activities.
  • Annual work plans showing activities planned to be conducted, locations, benchmarks/milestones, annual targets and inputs to be provided by NDI
  • Monitoring and Evaluation Plan which shows how NDI intended to monitor the progress and quality of the Electoral Empowerment of Civil Society” Program and evaluating its impact at inception.
  • Revised performance monitoring plan (PMP) (June 2017) showing the latest revisions made to the PMP in 2017 as a result of programmatic changes
  • Performance Indicator Tracking Table showing target and actual data collected since the inception of the project in 2014 to date
  • Non-US Government Organization Pre-Award Survey (NUPAS) reports for CSO partners which shows CSO partners ability to manage effectively the grants and efficiently implement the projects.
  • KPMG partner assessment reports which discuss partner internal policies, procedures, practices, guidelines and their management of NDI’s subgrant funds.
  • Participatory Institutional Analysis (PIA) for CSO partners which identified current needs of CSO partners in organizational and program management.
  • NDI internal M&E system diagnostic report.
  • Quarterly reports which shows actual accomplishments/results both for the reporting period and cumulatively.
  • Objective 1 baseline report (2016)
  • Objective 2 baseline report (2016)
  • Objective 3.1 baseline report (2016)
  • Objective 3.2 and 3.3 baseline report (2016)
• The Evaluator will check the logic of the program design, making the causal pathway of the program’s development hypothesis explicit. 
• An if-and-then logic check will be used to determine if each level of change is necessary and sufficient to reach subsequent levels of change. 
• The problem analysis will be reviewed to determine the link between the core problem and the intervention design. This task should begin before the evaluator’s departure to Abuja.
• The evaluator will produce for NDI an agreed to logical framework outlined and agreed upon with staff, including activities-to-outputs; outputs-to IRs; IRs-to-Objectives; draft problem map.
• The Evaluator will review the program’s performance criteria/indicators to ensure they are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound).  This will be done in consultation with program staff and relevant NDI functional team members. 
• This task should begin before the evaluator’s departure to Abuja, Nigeria and be completed in country. The evaluator will deliver agreed-upon indicators and critical assumptions for tracking change over the life of the program.
• In advance of the evaluation NDI’s program team will organize and make program data collected through the PMP and data collection tools accessible to the evaluator. The evaluator will coordinate with program staff on collecting, and analyzing data in-country. 
• Additionally, the evaluator will use noted lines of inquiry to conduct semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and meetings with: NDI Nigeria Resident Country Director, program and admin field and DC staff, CSO partners implementing various voter education and advocacy campaigns, youth, women and PWD participants in NDI’s program, relevant women, youth and PWDs government agencies and electoral stakeholders such as the Independent National Electoral Commission, the National Orientation Agency, political parties, and the National Assembly.
• The evaluator will deliver qualitative datasets collected and a preliminary analysis completed.
• The Evaluator will draft findings including recommendations for implementation for the remainder of NDI’s program.

Timeline

• Design and Data compilation: December 4 to December 30, 2017
• Data collection in the field: January 15 to February 9, 2018
• Data analysis:February 12 to March 2, 2018
• Final report: March 5th to March 30th, 2018

Application Closing Date
30th November, 2017.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online

Evaluation Proposal Package
NDI requests that interested parties submit a CV, Cover Letter and a short technical proposal and by November 30, 2017.

The technical proposal should contain:

• A written statement of interest and qualifications (no more than five pages in length) highlighting: prospective data collection options for this program, including experience with each proposed approach. If proposing a junior evaluation specialist as part of the evaluation team, include relevant experience and thematic expertise of team members and the tasks each member would fulfill;
• A current CV for the evaluator;
• At least two client references from past evaluation work;
• One example of a previous evaluation inception report written by the evaluator; and
• One example of an assessment or evaluation report written by the evaluator.

All submitted materials will be used by NDI for the sole purpose of selecting a final consultant to fulfill this Scope of Work.

Period of Performance

• NDI anticipates the evaluation to take place between January 15, 2018 and March 30, 2018.
• The evaluator can propose hourly rate or fixed price per deliverable.