ALNAP Strategy development support

Applications should be sent by email to [email protected] by midnight UK time on Friday 11 October. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted for interview.

Interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis and ALNAP may recruit for this position before the deadline.

For queries, please write to [email protected].

1. Background

ALNAP is the global network for advancing humanitarian learning. We are the oldest global learning network in the humanitarian sector, working to strengthen the quality, uptake and use of key learning for over 25 years. Our aim is to ensure this learning is to the benefit of crisis affected people through improved accountability and performance in the organisations that serve them, and for all humanitarians to benefit from our collective experience.

ALNAP has been fulfilling its mission with a high impact portfolio of work for nearly 3 decades – but we are also seeing how significantly the learning challenge for the humanitarian sector has changed since our founding and are seeking to make changes to address these newer challenges.

This year marks the end of ALNAP's current strategy 2019-2024 and we plan to use this autumn to draw together an updated impact model as a core component of ALNAP’s new strategy that will begin in April 2025.

Over the last two years we have done a lot of thinking about ALNAP’s impact model within the Secretariat and in consultation with members, our Steering Committee, and the wider sector. Key to this is a recognition that the learning challenge for the humanitarian sector has fundamentally shifted. Back in 1997 when ALNAP was established after the joint evaluation to the Rwanda genocide, the humanitarian sector looked vastly different. There were no clusters, very rarely would an agency have an entire staffed department dedicated to humanitarian M&E, and the humanitarian sector as a whole was quite small, closely knit, and dominated by global north organisations. The learning challenge at that time was very much focused around three factors:

While elements of this are still true, we find that the core features of the learning problem today are that:

In addition to these reflections, ALNAP has been through a brand refresh process that was launched earlier this year and through which we consulted members and drew together an updated expression of ALNAP’s identity, aims and relevance to the humanitarian sector. We also conducted a project to better understand and segment humanitarian audiences and their learning and communication preferences. This research is yet to be published but provides plenty of useful analysis to inform ALNAP’s strategic thinking.

2. About the assignment

ALNAP is looking to contract a consultant(s) with expertise in systems thinking, facilitation, and theory of change/impact models, to support us in developing an updated systems-informed impact model to underpin our new strategy. Applicants should have a proven track record of developing theories of change for organisations and of working with systems thinking/approaches with organisations in humanitarian or relevant sector.

Through the work that we have done to date, we feel we have sufficient analysis and understanding to set out the situation analysis for the new strategy, including the issues we want to tackle and what ALNAP would bring to the situation, as well as the target groups for our work. We also feel that, with a strong impact model in place we are in a good position to work on the specific objectives and activities we expect to deliver (though we are interested in any observations, resulting from the impact model facilitation process, on difficult decisions the consultant feels we may need to consider).

Specifically, we are looking for support to help us bring together the wealth of thinking and perspectives we have garnered in recent years, into an impact model that will sit at the center of our new strategy. ALNAP’s impact model needs to work both as the basis for our strategy for the next 5-10 years, articulating ALNAP’s approach to strengthening learning in the humanitarian sector, as well as to articulate the challenge that we are taking to the humanitarian system (i.e. what do we see the sector needing to do to strengthen its approach to learning and change). We would like ALNAP’s impact model to be rooted in systems thinking in a way that tells a compelling and engaging story of the complexities of learning and change and is challenging to humanitarian stakeholders, but not alienating in its language or overly complicated in its visual presentation.

3. Target audience

The primary audience for this process is the ALNAP Secretariat in the first instance. We would like the consultant to facilitate a participatory team wide process that enables us to draft an impact model that we can then consult members on. Developing a shared, team wide, understanding of system work within an ALNAP context will be key this so that we 1) have a shared organisational understanding and language around what systems change means in our context, and 2) to identify clear practical ways to operationalise such an approach.

4. Deliverables

We are looking for a consultant(s) to deliver in the region of 3-4 facilitated workshops with the ALNAP secretariat with a focus on:

• Developing a shared language and understanding of systems work and how this relates to ALNAP’s context
• Developing a draft impact model
• Supporting the team to reflect on the impact model and implications for what we do
• Developing an external facing story of change

The consultants will need to factor in time to read background documents and notes from previous meetings, to have prep calls with a few members of the Secretariat, to plan and follow up on the workshops.

5. Timeline

The contract will span between October and November 2024. The total number of work days for this assignment is likely to be in the region of 10 days.