Tenders Direct’s Post

If you want to win more public contracts, you need to know how to incorporate social value in your bids. You need to understand what social value means for different buyers, how to measure and evidence it, and how to write convincing responses showcasing your social value proposition. This training course covers everything you need to know, and will help you to write tenders with social value in mind. #socialvalue #tenders #bidwriting

DPS for Skills and Investment Grant Funding Worcestershire County Council is putting in place a DPS for Skills and Investment Grant Funding. The Council's Investment in Skills Team aims to help people into employment and to work towards improving skills in the county. The scope of the projects delivered by the Investment in Skills Team can vary in context, value and duration but, collectively, and over time they support the goals of the Team which is funded by various grant providers such as the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the Department for Education, etc . The Team does not have the capacity to meet all the needs of all its Service Users, it therefore commissions the knowledge and skills of externally qualified, licensed and experienced providers to work on a variety of training projects as and when required to meet requirements. There are 5 Categories which Suppliers may wish to apply for, they are: Category 1 Employability & Skills Training for people to build up sector-specific skills and/or upskill to help people gain skills for life, help support skills demands in their local area, and ultimately help people to get into employment and have the opportunity for a progression within their current job. Category 2 Education Training and support to help adults improve their numeracy skills in everyday life and boost their employment prospects. It also aims to contribute to businesses to develop their employees' numeracy skills which can boost productivity, increase profits, and improve employee retention. Category 3 Digital Developing digital tools to support various projects. Category 4 Consultancy Advice and support for businesses in the county via curriculum development, workforce planning, and supported internship. The aim will be to support businesses with growth and competitive advantage by fulfilling their staffing/skills needs. Category 5 Health and Wellbeing Training, advice and guidance to support health and wellbeing, and to improve confidence, resilience, motivation, social integration with the goal of empowering people to achieve their true employment potential. Value: to £25,000,000 Deadline: 30 September 2028 If you intend to bid and require any support with making applications, please contact [email protected] Sign up for Live Tender Alerts at: https://lnkd.in/dReZwFQb

Digital Divide Grants West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) The Digital Divide Grants are provided and administered by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) as part of the Digital Divide project which aims to address Digital Exclusion and to support West Midlands residents to connect with the Digital Skills Opportunities. Objectives of Fund The funding is intended to develop a routeway from first contact to a device to accredited learning and ultimately good employment, reducing Digital Exclusion levels. The funding aims to support at least two community organisations per WMCA constituent Local Authority (Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton). The delivery within each Local Authority will engage with 400 residents across a 20-month period from December 2024 to July 2026. The proposal needs to meet the following: Delivery based on engagement, stabilisation, introduction to Digital skills with progression to Adult Community Learning / Adult Education Budget accredited training. Each organisation awarded grant funding will engage and support up to 200 residents across an initial 20-month period. Engagement with residents is primarily focused on outreach activities and aligned partnership working not dependent on Jobcentreplus referrals. Support is offered on a one-to-one basis by dedicated key worker, with each resident having an Individual Learning Plan (ILP). Attendance should be voluntary based on resident need; however, learners should be engaged on a weekly basis for the duration of the support. Support should be aligned with the ILP, with a focus on progression to tackle digital exclusion in line with the guidance provided in the WMCA Digital Blueprint. 60% of learners (120 per grant award) should progress onto accredited learning via Adult Community Learning or Adult Education Budget provider. Value: up to £2 million will be awarded in grant funding over the initial 20 month period. Grants of between £80,000 and £142,857 are available. It is anticipated that at least 14 organisations will be funded. Location: Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton Deadline for applications is 1 November 2024 If you intend to bid and require any support with making applications, please contact [email protected] Sign up for Live Tender Alerts at: https://lnkd.in/dReZwFQb

Are you looking to improve your application for the SGA Bursary? 🗣 Communicate your #governance roles and responsibilities more clearly by providing us with concrete examples 🏅 Tell us how taking part will benefit you and your own #governance aspirations 🏛 How will this benefit your organisation? Even if you don't know the end point, where will your organisation be starting and what do you want to move away from? 🎨 Tailor your responses to the module you're applying for, why is this module specifically going to benefit you and your organisation? Take a look at all of our top tips to level up your application - https://lnkd.in/ebUVpi5r

We are so very happy to receive so many requests for training sessions, workshops, studies and process support at this time. However, we often have to decline these requests. Why? 😟 Requests often come in just before the project‘s start date. Sure, we can respond spontaneously and squeeze in a workshop here and there, but that’s often stressful as we are usually already quite booked last minute. ❤️Therefore, please make your inquiries as early as possible—ideally at least three months before the project starts. 😟 The deadline for submitting a proposal is… often practically at midnight. Preparing offers, developing concepts, and assembling teams takes time. Smaller agencies like ours typically do not have dedicated positions solely focused on acquisition. We are consultants ourselves, managing ongoing projects while also handling acquisition. ❤️Therefore, please plan for at least four weeks before your deadline for applications. 😟 The daily rate is too low. This is always a challenge in the NGO sector. While daily rates of one or two thousand euros are normal in the corporate world, NGOs often come in with rates under €500. When we ask for more, we often receive bewildered looks. This is usually because people don’t realize what is left after taxes, various insurances, and different licenses for various tools, and so on. ❤️ Please consider that consultants need to be able to make a living from their work-pay them well. 😟 The tender process is too complicated and time-consuming. Yes, most organizations and institutions funded by public means must issue tenders for their consulting positions. And this can be REALLY time-consuming, as it often involves many documents that need to be filled out, signed, and uploaded to platforms, with lengthy performance descriptions (today, we faced one with 18 pages!). This consumes time and often leads to frustration. ❤️ Therefore please pay attention to using clear and easy language in tenders and always provide a complete list of all required documents.

Dear project and/or contract managers, the post below also goes for hiring freelance consultants (less so the 1st point, as sometimes we do have gaps and may be able to take assignments short-notice, but not ideal for us either). Thank you FEIN - Feminist-Intersectional Research and Consulting for drawing attention to these. 😕 Dear (potential) commissioners who love human rights and fairness, I would like to draw attention to one more thing, in addition to the list below. This unfortunately happens quite often lately: When you send us feedback to a tender proudly informing us that a consultancy company with a "more economical proposal" has won it and hinting to us that we should also make similar offers if we want to be in the race, please be informed that more often than not, you are involuntarily supporting price dumping. When a middle or large consultancy company offers you a lower daily fee, someone else has to pay the price. Remember, many of them are FOR profit. This is not bad per sé and could enable independence from donors. Just that oftentimes the profit is NOT shared with the subcontracted consultants. The experts working for you will largely be the same people at the end of the day, just that they are earning an average of 30%-40% LESS (sub-contracting charge). Sure, theoretically one has less work with acquisition and coordination, but only if we give up autonomy and work solely as sub-contractors. This is not what most of us want. Plus the advice you get in that case is not even really independent anymore (which is one of the reasons why many of you need external consultants in the first place). Btw., sometimes the offers with below-average prices may come from experienced independent consultants. They do not do this because they can afford it, nor because the fees are fair to them, but because otherwise one gets crushed by the unfair competition happening currently. ❤️ Please continue contracting independent consultants and fair micro consulting agencies as often as possible, so the people that you get your services from can make a living without endangering their health and livelihoods. Thank you! 💙

This is a great post in helping to explain why we, and other small firms or civil society organisations, are not always available for work we'd really love to do. We often support government and civil society partners with their own strategic and internal planning. We try and apply those same principles to our own work which means we are usually fully occupied at least 3 months in advance, sometimes longer. There is a huge tension that needs highlighting and addressing between the localisation and decolonisation agenda and the current procurement practices of the international development sector.

This service review course will guide you through the essentials needed to design and undertake a review of a program, operation or service using a practical, results-based framework. While the course will have a focus on local government, it will offer all participants knowledge and skills in how to plan, undertake and report on evaluation activities covering review planning, design, research and consultations, and reporting issues. See https://lnkd.in/gaJxigHH for details. #servicereview #programreview #evaluation #reviewplanning #localgovernment