Consultancy Opportunity

SCOPE OF WORK

Assignment Title: Adaptation of Venture37 Cooperative Performance Assessment tool

Project name: Cooperative Resilience and Equity Activity - CORE

Assignment Locations: Rwanda

Contract (Fixed term): February to March 2024

Project overview 

Land O’Lakes Venture37 is implementing the Cooperative Resilience and Equity Activity (CORE) cooperative development program in Rwanda and Zambia, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The goal of the CORE activity is to foster vibrant, sustainable cooperative ecosystems in Rwanda and Zambia, in which self-managed agricultural cooperatives and all their members flourish economically and socially. Through CORE, Venture37 will take a localized and market-responsive approach, engaging market actors, including women and youth, in activity design, implementation and measurement. CORE will 1) Inclusively strengthen the capacity of cooperatives by dynamically responding to their unique challenges and market opportunities by adapting existing, tested tools. 2) Improve the cooperative enabling environment by working with private and public service providers to deliver market-responsive and well-coordinated services to cooperatives. 3) Spur innovation, learning and continuous improvement in the local and global development community through embedded applied research.                         

Assignment background 

To assess the performance of cooperatives, Land O’Lakes Venture37 has developed the Performance Management Measurement (PM2) tool. This assessment tool provides benchmarks and periodic monitoring data on agricultural cooperatives’ performance, helps identify improvement areas, develop action plans to address identified gaps and monitor improvements. While the PM2 tool is well designed to assess all the performance areas of an agricultural cooperative, the CORE team recognizes the need to adapt it to provide a more comprehensive picture to cooperatives leaders, members, and other potential users.  In this regard, Land O’Lakes Venture37 is seeking the services of a qualified Consultant to adapt the current version of the PM2 tool to make it more comprehensive, user- friendly and social inclusive.

Some of the specific adaptation needs to the PM2 tool, include but not limited to: 

• Confirm and or propose relevant performance pillars considering aspects of an agricultural cooperative.
• Re-define performance criteria per pillar and propose their corresponding good practices against which cooperatives need to be assessed.
• Make PM2 more gender & youth inclusive in the context of agricultural cooperatives.
• Revise the scoring of performance criteria and propose appropriate scoring levels per criteria.
• Re-design a format with a clearer and more user-friendly layout, ensuring easier completion for a wider range of potential users. The format needs to be accessible and usable across various devices.
• Develop and test accurate formulas to provide numeric figures of the assessed pillars and present them in a visual format. 

Scope of services 

The Consultant will provide the following services: 

• Perform a critical review of the current version of PM2 to identify strengths and weaknesses of the structure and content.
• Conduct a thorough review of existing cooperative assessment tools relevant to this assignment.
• Conduct consultative sessions with key cooperative actors, to gather views on cooperative performance, and corresponding assessment tools.
• Guided by findings from the previous action points, adapt the content of the PM2 by affirming key performance pillars for an agricultural cooperative and their corresponding performance criteria.
• Adjust the current PM2 MS excel format or develop a new format that suits the most.
• Conduct a pilot test on a small sample of agricultural cooperatives.
• Host a validation workshop with Venture37 team and relevant stakeholders to establish the reliability, acceptance, and validity of the adapted PM2 tool.
• Provide a summary user guide.
• Submit a comprehensive assignment report together with the final version of adapted PM2 tool.

Outputs and deliverables 

Qualification/Experience

• At least 5 years of technical experience working with/on development of agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda and or in the region.
• Proven track record in assessing the performance of agricultural cooperatives.
• Experience in designing automated excel tools and dashboards.
• Experience in developing a cooperative assessment tool is an added advantage.
• Understanding of agriculture sector development and cooperative issues in Rwanda.
• Proven record in delivering high quality outputs on time and on budget.
• Fluent in Kinyarwanda and English.
• Available for assignment as soon as possible.

Interested individual consultants or consultant firms are encouraged to send their cover letter, CV or company profile, and two certificates of completion of similar assignments to  Procurement.CDP@landolakes.com  not later than January 21, 2024 at 6:00PM Kigali time.

The title of the email must include “PM2 Adaptation assignment.”

Other Considerations: Land O’Lakes Venture37 will provide transportation, venue hire and other necessary logistical supplies, but arrangements must be agreed upon with the assignment manager prior to making any cost commitment.