Request for Proposal for Monitoring and Evaluation Agency: Enabling Formal Financing to Women-led Enterprises in NRLM – Sa-Dhan

Last date for the application 15th Jan 24

Sa-Dhan is a network of 220 organizations in 33 states/UTs and over 600 districts, which includes both, for Profit and Not for Profit MFIs, SHG promoting institutions, banks, rating agencies, capacity-building institutions, etc.

Sa-Dhan has been recognized by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) as a Self – Regulatory Organisation (SRO) for the microfinance sector in the year 2015 to administer industry regulations, tools, and performance standards for effective monitoring of MFIs, their compliance with regulations and the Code of Conduct in the best interest of clients. As an SRO, Sa-Dhan has been at the forefront to formulate and administer industry regulations, tools, and performance standards for effective monitoring of MFIs, their compliance with regulations, and the Code of Conduct in the best interest of clients. Sa-Dhan is committed to develop the Indian microfinance sector on professional, healthy, and ethical lines.

Sa-Dhan is also recognized as a National Support Organization (NSO) by the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM). The Goal of Sa-Dhan is to develop, promote, and support ecosystems of Impact Financing institutions that enable Inclusive Growth, equity, gender equality, and sustainable development in the society.

Enabling Formal Financing to Women-led Enterprises in NRLM
RFP released by: Sa-Dhan
Last date of submission of queries: 5th January 2024
Final date of submission of proposal: 15th January 2024
All queries and final proposals should be submitted to Udit Thukral at: udit@sa-dhan.org

All emails in this regard should contain the subject line:
o For queries: “Queries: Enabling Formal Financing to WLEs”
o For proposal submission: “Proposal: Enabling Formal Financing to WLEs

About the Project

Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM) is a flagship poverty alleviation program implemented by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. It aims to reduce poverty by enabling poor households to access gainful self-employment and skilled wage employment opportunities resulting in sustainable and diversified livelihood options for the poor.

NRLM currently has around 8.4 million SHGs with over 90 million women SHG members. According to NRLM’s estimate, around 10 million of these women members are now mature having more than 2 years of entrepreneurial and SHG experience. These women have loan requirements mainly in the range of INR 75,000 – INR 0.5 million (USD 940 to USD 6,250) and many of these also need loans above INR 0.5 million.

SHGs were neither designed nor have the appropriate products to cater to this demand. This bottleneck is stifling the growth of these women entrepreneurs. To cater to this huge credit requirement of women entrepreneurs, NRLM has taken the initiative to help these women ‘graduate’1 from group-based loans to individual microenterprise loans.

To support NRLM in this initiative of individual enterprise financing, this project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) will provide Technical Assistance (TA) to DAY-NRLM to improve their national, state, and district-level implementation architecture.

The TA will work with the SHGs and Vitta Sakhis to ensure women-led enterprises [WLEs] have improved access to formal sources of finance and larger loans for their enterprises.

The project will be implemented across seven states – Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Assam and Gujarat. It is scheduled to span three years, commencing in November 2023 and concluding in October 2026.

Scope of Work

In the context of the above project, Sa-Dhan wants to engage a Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Agency for the entire duration of the project.

The scope of work for the M&E Agency will be as follows:

1. To conduct the Baseline for the project
2. To conduct periodic project monitoring visits
3. To conduct the Endline evaluation of the project

Baseline

The baseline survey will be done to gather household economic profiles and enterprise-related data of the SHG members of NRLM in the project states. The data should specifically capture the household income and expenditure data and the enterprise financial data, aligned with the project outcomes. The baseline can also capture qualitative data to understand the challenges faced by women in accessing formal credit or other aspects relevant to the project.

Periodic Project Monitoring

• The M&E Agency must conduct six-monthly monitoring visits of all the project sites to independently report on the progress of the project, its challenges, achievements, case studies, best practices, and the quality of implementation. The M&E agency should also provide recommendations to improve any aspect of the project implementation.
• The monitoring exercise will require the M&E Agency to interact with the beneficiaries, SRLM officials, NRLM officials, financial service providers, the project implementation team, and other relevant stakeholders. The data from the project MIS for tracking the project activities will also be made available to the M&E agency.
• The M&E Agency will submit monitoring reports after each project monitoring visit.

Endline Evaluation

• At the end of the project, the M&E agency will conduct the endline evaluation of the project.
• This will entail a primary survey with the beneficiaries and a comparison of the endline data with the baseline.
• The sample must be distributed across 7 states. The M&E agency can come up with the sampling design.
• Apart from the quantitative data, the Endline evaluation will also capture the qualitative data from the beneficiaries as well as other stakeholders. The endline report should highlight:

o The project outputs and outcomes
o Key project impact on beneficiaries
o What worked and what did not work in the project
o Key learnings
o Recommendations for improving outcomes of similar projects

Eligibility for M&E Agency

The following are the eligibility criteria for the M&E Agency:

• Only registered organizations are eligible, this RFP is not open for individual consultants.
• The organization must be at least 5 years old as of 31 December 2023.
• The organization must have a minimum turnover of Rs 2 crore as of the last financial year of 2022-23.
• The organization must have undertaken at least 5 M&E assignments, demonstrating a proven track record of successfully evaluating and monitoring diverse projects across various sectors.

Proposal document

Following instructions should be followed for submission of the proposal.

1. All proposals should be written in English language and submitted in PDF document format only. There is no need to submit a hard copy.
2. The proposal document should not exceed 15 pages excluding pages for team CVs
3. The proposal document must contain the following information:
   a. Brief about the organization
   b. Capability statement for this project
   c. Methodology for all 3 components as defined in the scope of work
   d. Experience with past similar assignments
   e. Budget for the entire scope of work: The budget should provide details for each of the three components of the M&E separately viz. Baseline, Project
4. Monitoring, and Endline Evaluation
   f. Brief Profile and CVs of key team members

The last date of submission of queries is 5 th January 2024 and the final date of submission of proposal is 15th January 2024. All queries and final proposals should be submitted to Udit Thukral at udit@sa-dhan.org

All emails in this regard should contain the subject line:

• For queries: “Queries: Enabling Formal Financing to WLEs”
• For proposal submission: “Proposal: Enabling Formal Financing to WLEs”