30 March Dear Dr. Arinaitwe,

Transcription

1 30 March 2012 Dr. Julius Arinaitwe Regional Director for Africa BirdLife International - Africa Partnership Secretariat Off Kasarani Road PO Box GPO Nairobi, Kenya Subject: Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot Regional Implementation Team BirdLife Consortium Proposal in response to RFP No. EAM-1, RIT-Administration BirdLife Consortium Proposal in response to RFP No. EAM-2, RIT-Programs Request for Clarifications and Best and Final Offer Dear Dr. Arinaitwe, Thank you for submitting proposals on behalf of BirdLife International and its consortium members in response to the two subject Requests for Proposals. The CEPF Secretariat has reviewed the proposals and determined that the BirdLife consortium and one alternative consortium are in the competitive range. In order for the Secretariat to advise the CEPF donor representatives on the selection of a Regional Implementation Team (RIT), we have several clarification questions. As such, we ask that you respond to these questions in the form of revised proposals that will constitute a Best and Final Offer. Please submit these proposals by Friday, 27 April For contractual reasons, CEPF requested that proponents submit separate proposals for the Administrative and Programmatic functions of the RIT. Via this letter, we will make comments equally germane to both proposals as well as comments directed at each proposal individually. At the close of each comment, we instruct you how to respond in order to aid our review and final evaluation. Comments Regarding Both Proposals 1. We fully endorse the placement of EWNHS personnel in Addis Ababa, and given political limitations, recognize that addressing Yemen from a base in Jordan is the most immediately practical solution. However, the remainder of named management positions are based in Nairobi and Maputo. Notwithstanding the good air linkages from Nairobi to other parts of the hotspot, and recognizing the advantage offered by your consortium s existing office infrastructure in Nairobi and Maputo, how will you efficiently address what we anticipate will be regular needs from applicants/grantees. Will you conduct all work by telephone and electronic mail? Will your Nairobi and Maputo-based staff have a regular travel schedule and a sufficiently robust travel budget to spend extended periods in Tanzania and Zimbabwe, among others? Will you consider establishing an additional base of operations, or relocating one of the proposed bases?

2 2. The Ecosystem Profile anticipates an important focus on civil society strengthening and on economic development activities, albeit within the context of a program supporting conservation goals. The majority of personnel and the dominant qualifications of the consortium members, however, trend toward conservation, alone. You are free to revise the composition of your proposed personnel and consortium members. Alternatively, how will your proposed team and organizations address economic development issues, or what role do you see the RIT having in relation to these issues? 3. We appreciate the combined level of expertise offered by BirdLife and IUCN. However, there appears to be redundancy in what the organizations offer to CEPF, as evidenced by both of your organizations having offices in Nairobi. Please remove any redundant efforts. Please also address how you will deploy your personnel by country or different geographic parts of the hotspot. Please also explain the relative roles of financial support provided by BirdLife in Cambridge (e.g., Munya Shahwe) versus the presumed support available in the 15-person Nairobi office. CEPF identifies the geographic disconnect between the Nairobi and Cambridge offices between the managerial and technical delivery in Nairobi and the financial accountability in Cambridge as a risk. Please elaborate on this issue. change appropriate sections of both proposals and the budgets, as necessary. 4. Based on the two budgets submitted, it appears the role of the EWNHS will be limited to an engagement of $60,000 over five years. It is not clear if there is other money in the budget dedicated to management of work in Ethiopia. Given the importance of Ethiopia within the hotspot, including the several KBAs located there, please provide more information on how your consortium intends work technically, managerially, administratively in Ethiopia. change appropriate sections of both proposals and the budgets, as necessary. 5. We appreciate the care you have taken to submit two separate budgets, as requested. Should your consortium be selected, we will continue to use two separate budgets to manage the financial elements of your work. However, for ease of our review, please complete the table below. Note that you should not complete this table without first making revisions to the budgets and technical proposals for Administration and Programs, as instructed elsewhere in this letter. When you complete this table, it should match mathematically, identically, to your budgets for Administration and Programs. Page 2 of 5

3 Position Title RIT Manager Supervisor Senior Program Officer Manager Accountant Name Maaike Manten Julius Arinaitwe BirdLife: EAM RIT Consolidated Staffing Plan Organization Location (city) Level of (days) Billed to Administration Level of (days) Billed to Programs Level of Contributed as Counterpart Total Level of BirdLife Nairobi ,042 BirdLife Nairobi John Dixon IUCN Nairobi Mengistu Wondafrash Munya Shahwe EWNHS Addis Ababa???? BirdLife Cambridge Total ,272 In the table above, we have completed a few lines as an example, based on your current proposal submissions. Complete the final table per the following instructions: List every single position/person who will provide a substantial contribution to or be direct billed to CEPF. Thus, include all technical staff, consultants, professional services, and advisors. Include administrative personnel, such as the finance manager, who will be direct billed to CEPF. Do not include personnel, such as drivers or receptionists, who will not be direct billed to CEPF. If the position has been identified, but the individual person has not yet been recruited, please list their name as TBD, for to be determined. Given that you have proposed people for as few as two days per month to close to full full-time throughout the five year duration of the project, for ease of comparison, please show all level of effort in number of work days. (Your budgets state that a full work-year is 220 days. Therefore, a full-time person for the life of the RIT will be budgeted for 1,100 days.) Please submit this table once as a supplement to both proposals. 6. Please consider the cost realism of your two budgets in relation to the actual managerial task of serving as the RIT. Certain elements appear under-costed, certain elements appear mis-costed, and certain elements appear over-costed. As an example of under-costing, between the Administration and Programs proposals, there is a combined travel budget of $125,862, less than ten percent of the total available budget. Our experience is that more travel should be expected, or do you propose to address this in some other way? As an example of mis-costing, your budget includes $60,000 combined for mid-term and final evaluation workshops. CEPF intends to engage a separate grantee to conduct these efforts. Please remove this cost item from your budget. As an example of over-costing, IUCN daily rates of $800 are questionable. Page 3 of 5

4 As an example of unclear costing, you propose for eight people to travel under the BirdLife budget, annually, to Nairobi for RIT meetings. It is not clear who all eight of these people are or whether they are all necessary on an annual basis. In sum, your Management Approach and budget(s) should reflect the placement of personnel, the movement of people through the hotspot to conduct the job, and the pacing of this work based on an expectation of the pace or location of work over the course of five years. Please revise both your Administration and Programmatic proposals per Item of both RFPs (management systems and/or approach) and then, revise both budgets accordingly. 7. Please ensure a complete response to RFP item and Evaluation Criterion 4. In particular, discuss what variation you anticipate in working with different elements of civil society, on different strategic directions, within different KBAs or corridors, within different countries. Do you anticipate the same type of grants in all cases, with the same level of management support, and the same intersection of interests between the BirdLife Consortium and the grantees? Comments Regarding EAM-1, RIT-Administration 8. Please ensure a complete response to RFP item v and Evaluation Criterion 2, in particular discussing BirdLife s experience managing a small grants fund similar to the one envisioned for CEPF, with as much as $1,000,000, and/or your existing systems to manage such funds. We assume this role is to be managed by BirdLife as opposed to a consortium member. If that is not the case, be specific about this. Provide an answer to this question as a supplement to your Administration proposal. Then, change the appropriate sections of the Administration proposal, accordingly. 9. Please ensure a complete response to RFP item and Evaluation Criterion 5 in terms of the specific tasks described in the RIT Administration Logical Framework. Do you anticipate any pacing or sequencing of calls for small and large grant applications or in monitoring activities. Do you intend to manage the hotspot by sub-region or country, or do you intend to manage it as one unit? Revise your Administration proposal, accordingly. 10. Please ensure a complete response to RFP item , item and Evaluation Criterion 6. Please ensure your understanding that BirdLife will be the sole signatory of a grant with CEPF to manage the RIT-Administration and the sole recipient of funds. Similarly, BirdLife will be the sole signatory of a grant with CEPF to maintain and disburse small grant funds. At any given time, there will be activities in multiple countries, in some of which you propose a full-time presence (e.g., Kenya) and in some of which you propose no presence (e.g., Democratic Republic of the Congo). How do you propose to transfer money to small Page 4 of 5

5 grantees in Ethiopia, in particular? How will approvals/reviews of grantee payments occur in relation to the Team Leader or the CEPF Grant Director? Revise your Administration proposal, accordingly. Comments Regarding EAM-2, RIT-Programs 11. In response to RFP item , item , and Evaluation Criterion 1, describe the intersection of interests between members of the BirdLife Consortium and CEPF. Imagining a portfolio with, over five years, as many as 100 grants above and below $20,000, is there a way to create a synergy across the hotspot, within Strategic Directions, or surrounding KBAs/corridors? Recognizing that this is such a large hotspot and that it may be unrealistic to have connections from Yemen to Mozambique, do you have a smaller regional vision of what a collection of grants could create? Revise your Programs proposal, accordingly. 12. One of CEPF s donors, the MacArthur Foundation, has made a significant investment in the Albertine Rift Conservation Society (ARCOS), based in Kampala. ARCOS has a mandate to work in many of the same technical areas as CEPF, albeit within a geographic subset of the hotspot. Please address how the BirdLife Consortium, if awarded the CEPF grant, will ensure collaboration and complementarity of efforts with ARCOS. Please provide a stand-alone answer to this question; then, revise the most appropriate section of your Programs proposal, accordingly. The CEPF Secretariat will use your best and final offer proposals as the basis of the competitive evaluation that we present to our donors. We should be in a position to apprise you of the outcome by the final week of May. Should your offer be selected, it is highly likely that there will be further requests for clarification and modification, particularly regarding budget and contractual issues, prior to final award. We expect these discussions to continue intensively throughout June. Please plan for this possibility. If you have any questions regarding this letter or wish to schedule a telephone discussion, CEPF requests that you only initiate contact with me, directly. This is a competitive procurement procedure. Therefore, until the next submission deadline of Friday, 27 April 2012, do not contact any CEPF Grant Director or any member of the CEPF team other than me. You may reach me at drainey@conservation.org or at Regards, Deborah Rainey Senior Director Grants Management Unit Cc: Patricia Zurita, CEPF Executive Director Page 5 of 5