TENDER FOR UBONGO CHANGE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE

Type: Services Agreement Contract

Sector: Non-profit

Published: 18th October, 2024

Deadline: 31st October 2024

Duration: November 10th, 2024 – May 10th, 2025

Ubongo is a Pan-African social enterprise that leverages the power of entertainment, the reach of mass media, and the insights of kid-centered design, to bring effective, localized learning to African families at low cost and massive scale. We entertain kids to learn and love learning: building brains, and building change.

Ubongo seeks an experienced facilitator familiar with the opportunities, issues, challenges and context of the international development sector to provide support in streamlining the change process around implementation of a new 5-year Strategy, including but not limited to transitioning organizational activities to an Enterprise Resource Planning Software system and help reduce negative outcomes for internal teams and external stakeholders.
Ubongo’s new Strategy was launched on the 30th of September 2024 and has since been introduced to both internal & external stakeholders.

Ubongo 5 year strategy implementation.

Ubongo is looking to create a change management plan to support implementation of its new Strategy .

Considerations include:

• The company is shifting from startup to scale up, the strategy and approach around the change management process needs to support business transformation ensuring alignment with the vision and its strengths while still allowing for flexibility, innovation and growth.
• Need to ensure that leadership and the organization have a clear understanding of the direction & timelines of the changes, buy-in, ownerships, ability to implement and active participant of the organizational transformation.
• To facilitate buy-in, there may be a need for changes in mindset, how things are done within the organization and expectations
• Current culture is focused on short/mid terms goals rather than long term/strategic thinking. It has also historically been a “family” oriented culture and over the years this has not been feasible as we grow in size, activities and geographies. There needs to be sensitive change management around this, in line with how employees interact with each other, how decision making is done and received, and how this affects people’s work
• There is a disconnect between goals and strategy for most of the employees.

Why we want external facilitation

• To maintain effective communication across the organization during the changeover process to ensure that everyone is aligned and well-informed.
• Be able to get experienced change facilitators to drive for an objective approach and process.
• Upskilling leadership to understand strategy communication and how to get their people involved.
• We want to create an environment where through data, communication with staff at different levels is done to help meet all their needs and to ensure the goals of the change strategy align with organizational goals which may be more difficult if we do this as an internal exercise.
• Gain teams commitment and buy-in into the strategy implementation activities.
• Have a "third party" sounding board to see if we are taking off effectively, communicating effectively, using our time effectively etc, be it for the start of the change or overall as an organization.
• Provide subjective guidance to managing changes in operational compliance, and what that means to culture e.g. employee contracts terms

Scope of Work

What we need

We’re looking for someone/team who can facilitate the development of the change process towards implementation of our 5-year strategy. This should include:

• Assessing how prepared the organization is for the highlighted changes and stakeholder involvement

• Strategically adapting communication to deliver messages to the intended stakeholders with maximum reception effectively.

• Helping leadership gain support from every level of the organization through utilization of human psychology techniques & excellent interpersonal skills.

• Using the digital tools available (ERP) to help quicken the process of implementing highlighted changes as per strategy and make it practical for the internal teams to understand the changes.

• Evaluating and prioritizing feedback from the individuals impacted by different changes resulting from implementation of the new strategy using good communication skills.

• Providing materials & training Internal teams on continuous management of ongoing changes.

• Guide in how to manage changes in operational compliance, and what that means to culture e.g. employee contracts terms

• Guide in how to manage changing culture

Output: Clear, adaptable, high level change management Plan that has been tested at Ubongo over a period of 6 months and can help improve ROI, speed the overall buy-in & pace of internal changes, help Ubongo retain its top performers and prevent the strategy implementation from going off-track.

Timelines: The Change Management Plan implementation should begin on the 2nd of November 2024. Monitoring, feedback collection & training should be completed by 1st May 2024.

Relevant Experience

• The service provider(s) should have:

• Proven experience with Growth stage / Scale up organizations preferably social impact
• Proven experience developing plans and implementing change within a Pan African context

• Strategic Thinking

• Ability to think strategically to anticipate challenges and opportunities associated with organizational change.
• develop effective change strategies/plans aligned with the organization’s priorities & culture.

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Ability to create initiatives to get buy-in from stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Ability to cultivate relationships, build trust, and involve stakeholders in the change process.
• Ability to guide organizational culture

• Adaptability

• Ability to pivot plans & activities, address resistance, and maintain momentum throughout the change journey.

• Problem-Solving

• Strong problem-solving skills to help identify root causes, develop innovative solutions, and overcome obstacles effectively.

• Leadership

• Demonstrated leadership qualities in facilitator(s) such as vision, empathy, and resilience to support leaders to drive change and inspire staff to embrace new working methods, systems & processes.

• Change Management Methodologies

• Familiarity with change management methodologies and frameworks & proven approaches to effectively plan, execute, and monitor change initiatives.

• Data Analysis

• Experience gathering evidence & analyzing it to gauge the impact of change and measuring progress toward organizational goals.
• Ability to analyze data to identify trends, evaluate risks, and inform decision-making.

• Conflict Resolution

• Facilitator(s) to possess conflict resolution methods skills to address disagreements, facilitate dialogue, and foster collaboration.

• Emotional Intelligence

• Facilitator(s) to have the ability to understand and manage different emotional reactions at all levels to help navigate sensitive situations with empathy and tact.

• Knowledge bank/data on emerging trends, best practices, and industry developments to support creation of an adaptable change management plan.

Proposal

Submit your technical and financial proposal to: hilary@ubongo.org by October 31st, 2024. Only proposals will be considered. No CV submitted will be put into consideration for this tendering process.

Please include your tentative budget in your proposal. Should travel either way be required for facilitation, Ubongo will cover transport costs so please do not include this in your budget.

Technical Proposal

• Statement of work
• Comments and suggestions on terms of reference
• Qualifications
• Methodology and Approach
• Workplan
• Equipment and facilities
• Quality assurance
• Team composition and staff assignments
• References

Financial Proposal

• Total fees plus breakdown

• Structure (e.g. daily, deliverable based, etc)
• Fixed costs
• Reimbursable expenses