The Disability Rights Fund and its sister organization, the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund, are seeking proposals from experienced consultants to design and facilitate a participatory strategic planning process and lead staff to create a 5-year strategic plan for the organizations. In this process, the consultant will be engaging with the staff, Board of Directors, donors, organizations of persons with disabilities, and other stakeholders from the communities with which we work across the world.
Read the full Terms of Reference here: WORD | PDF
Responses to these Terms of Reference are due on 16 December 2022, COB EST time.
Previous Strategic Planning
DRF/DRAF’s Bridge Strategic Plan, originally developed to guide the organization through the pandemic period from July 2020 through December 2021, was extended through 2022 and will cross over into 2023. The extensions reflect recognition of ongoing complications related to COVID-19 and executive leadership transition and serve to grant time for the new Executive Director to coordinate development of the next multi-year Strategic Plan.
The organization’s last strategic plan 2017-2020 and its focus areas enabled us to bring tighter alignment with allies working on human rights; challenging inequality, promoting gender equity, and demanding climate justice, thereby solidifying the foundations of our work.
Forthcoming Strategic Planning Process
This is an exciting moment at DRF/DRAF. In the past 15 years, the organization’s growth has proven the success of our participatory approaches; now we are eager to take our model to the next level to better serve our goals of inclusion and social justice. In August 2022, Catalina Devandas, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities and Costa Rican Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, became DRF/DRAF’s new Executive Director. With a mandate to carry out a new strategic planning process, the Executive Director has been undertaking a transition and review process to better understand the achievements of the organization and envisage its continued growth. As such, the organizations are now poised to critically revise their work and explore opportunities to promote transformative change, while defining their focus and goals for the next 5 years.
At DRF/DRAF we see the strategic planning process as a great opportunity to think outside the box and re-energize our team after the pandemic and leadership transition. We expect the process will renew and elevate commitment across the organization’s family (grantees, team, board, donors and allies) for greater and more sustainable impact in peoples’ lives around the world.
Scope of Work
As an organization rooted in human rights, non-discrimination, and social justice that applies an intersectional approach, DRF/DRAF’s new strategic planning process must be embedded in principles of equality and non-discrimination on all grounds. This process should serve as an opportunity to critically review our practices, refresh our objectives, and strengthen mechanisms to hold the organization accountable to its values and principles.
The consultant(s) will work in close collaboration with lead staff and Board members to design, develop and facilitate a participatory and inclusive process for strategic planning, ultimately resulting in a written strategic plan for the next 5 years. The plan should be developed over a maximum of 8 months. It should include goals and objectives that build on current and prior work and are consistent with the current and potential capacity of the organization.
The consultant(s) will be expected to undertake international travel, including to attend and facilitate the staff retreat taking place in Thailand in early February 2023, when the strategic planning process is expected to be launched.
Duration of the assignment and duty station
The assignment is expected to start in January 2023 and the project deliverables are expected by early September 2023. After completion of deliverables there may be opportunity to extend the agreement to facilitate the roll out of the plan.
This is a remote-based assignment with mandatory travel in February 2023 for DRF’s staff retreat in Thailand, and potential travel to Fiji and New York. The exact number, destination and duration of trips remain to be determined. However, we expect the consultant(s) to maximize the use of virtual technology to support the project goals as DRF/DRAF operates primarily in a virtual context.
Budget and payments
The budget for the assignment is 100,000 USD, not including travel costs.