How NGOs win development contracts and calls for proposals

Development funders — UN agencies, bilateral donors, INGOs and foundations — publish work that looks like tendering and is scored like grant-making. NGOs that treat a call for proposals as a procurement exercise write compliant, uncompetitive submissions; those that treat it as a grant application miss hard eligibility rules and are screened out before anyone reads the idea. It is genuinely both.

1. Work out what you are actually looking at

• Call for proposals / request for applications. The funder states an objective and asks you to propose how to achieve it. Your approach is the competitive element.
• Request for proposals (RFP). A defined scope of services, evaluated technically and financially — usually QCBS. Closer to consultancy.
• Expression of interest. A shortlisting step. Short, and scored on your organisation’s track record rather than your ideas.
• Framework or long-term agreement. Pre-qualification for future work with no guaranteed volume. Worth doing early; worth costing honestly.

2. Eligibility is screened before anything else

Registration status, years of operation, audited accounts, country presence, minimum turnover, and sometimes registration with the funder’s own supplier system. None of this is negotiable and none of it is scored — you either pass or you are not read. Check it first, every time, and keep a standing folder of current documents so this never becomes the reason you skip a deadline.

3. Due diligence is the real competition

For most development funders the decisive question is not whether your idea is good but whether they can safely move money through you. Expect scrutiny of financial management, safeguarding policy, anti-fraud and anti-terrorism-financing compliance, data protection, and your ability to report against their formats.

This is where small organisations lose to larger ones — and it is also the most fixable gap, because it is administrative rather than intellectual. Getting audited accounts, written policies and a functioning finance system in place is unglamorous work that changes what you are eligible for permanently.

4. Partnership is a strategy, not a fallback

Funders increasingly want international capacity paired with genuine local delivery. A small national NGO with real community access is valuable to a consortium lead that has neither, and the reverse is equally true. Decide deliberately whether you are leading or partnering — the roles need different bids and different cost structures — and agree the budget split, the reporting burden and who owns the client relationship before you write. See joint ventures and consortium bidding.

5. Write to the scoring, not to your mission

Most calls publish criteria and weights. They are your section headings. Two specifics that reliably separate funded from unfunded applications:

• Evidence over intention. “We will strengthen community resilience” scores nothing. Numbers, locations, named partners and prior results score.
• An honest logframe. Reviewers look for the gap between outputs and outcomes — see how to write a grant proposal.

6. Budget realistically, including the parts that feel awkward

Under-budgeting to look cheap is the most common self-inflicted wound in the sector. If your indirect costs are not covered, the project is subsidised from reserves you may not have. Read the eligible-cost rules, claim what the funder permits, and cost staff time at what it actually costs.

7. Find the calls before the last week

Development opportunities are scattered across dozens of agency and INGO sites, most with no notification of their own. Set up alerts by sector rather than checking sites manually — how to find the right tenders faster — and browse open grants and funding opportunities or filter tenders by the development sectors you work in. A call found with five days left is a call you will answer badly.