Request for Proposal: Monitoring of interventions in Brazil – 2025

Introduction

Water.org empowers people to take action and deliver solutions that accelerate progress and impact. The approach ranges from pioneering market‐based approaches such as WaterCredit to strengthening utilities to improve service provision. Our work is comprehensive and demand‐driven – communities know what solutions will work best for them in the long‐term – and rooted in local technologies and innovations. Water.org works in partnership with financial institutions (FIs) to achieve its objectives. WaterCredit empowers those living in poverty to gain access to affordable credit to meet their own water and sanitation needs.

As part of Water.org monitoring and evaluation practice to validate its impact, household surveys are regularly administered on a recurring basis for all Water.org’s interventions. These surveys validate whether Water.org programming has resulted in functional and approved water and/or sanitation improvements. Additionally, the surveys gather information regarding the impact of the water and/or sanitation improvement on a households’ health, finances time savings, etc. These surveys are conducted in a representative sample of the total number of loans (clients) of each intervention.

This Request for Proposals has been prepared with the aim of engaging a third-party firm to conduct program monitoring visits (PMVs) via household surveys and to monitor the field activities of the partners of Water.org in the area of water and sanitation microfinance in Brazil.

Objectives

The objective of this consultancy is to conduct household surveys in order to validate the results achieved by Water.org partners (97 surveys for BNB and 43 for Cresol) through the implementation of water and/or sanitation loans reported to Water.org.

Scope of Work and methodology

Water.org will provide the list of clients to interview to the third-party firm. Due to the clients’ location in rural areas of the country, the consultant will not have exact addresses to locate them (for the case of BNB). However, they will have clients phone numbers and information about the locality and support from Water.org’s partners to identify the household’s location. The consultant will need to coordinate with the partner and loan agents who will provide guidance on how to reach the clients’ residences and facilitating logistics. The third-party firm will be responsible of conducting in-person validation surveys by visiting clients in their homes to verify functionality of water and/or sanitation improvement financed by the partner.

A quantitative survey will be administered to the client during the visit. The survey takes approximately 40-60 minutes to administer. Water.org will provide the survey tool to be used for client interviews at the household level which include questions regarding loan use, client satisfaction with loan process and water and/or sanitation improvement, changes in client quality of life (income, perceived health, women’s empowerment and time saving) and others. Additionally, during the visits conducted for the surveys, enumerators must verified that a water or sanitation loan has indeed been taken and that the loan has enabled the client to acquire a complete and functional water or sanitation improvement. This includes visiting the site where the improvement was carried out and providing photographic documentation of the water and sanitation improvement in the household.

The third party will collect data using the mWater mobile survey tool. Utilizing mWater survey tools ensures real time data collection and quality control. Water.org will provide training to the third-party firm’s core team members on the survey and use of mWater tool. When necessary, the core team members will be responsible for training all enumerators on how to administer the survey as well as how to utilize mWater. The third party is responsible for acquiring mobile devices compatible with the mWater application. The most recent list of compatible devices can be found on the mWater website here. Please note that this list is not exhaustive.

The third party will maintain independence and the highest professional ethical standards and confidentiality in collecting and reviewing information and presenting the assessment results. Consultants will not share any information and observation with the Water.org partners without permission.

Activities

1. The assignment requires the third-party firm to perform the following activities:
2. Participate in a kick-off meeting with Water.org staff to clarify roles and responsibilities in the assignment as well as in progress meetings.
3. Submit an inception report (in English) which includes:
   1. Proposed plan to reach clients and coordination with partners and loans agents for each partner institution.
4. Workplan/timeline to ensure timely completion.
   1. Enumerator training.
   2. Data quality assurance practices.
5. Participate in a virtual training session on the mWater app.
6. The third-party firm will be responsible for coordinating with the partners for data collection to obtain clients contact information to conduct surveys.
7. A standard survey questionnaire will be provided by Water.org. The tool has already been translated into Portuguese. The third-party will review the survey and provide feedback regarding wording of questions, answer options or notes.
8. Conduct quantitative survey data collection via the mWater app per the approved sample size and sampling method.
9. The consulting firm will be responsible for ensuring quality control in data collection by reviewing, approving or rejecting the surveys submitted by the enumerators on the mWater platform.
10. Submit a final report (in English) covering the following topics:
    1. Final interviewed sample (margin of error, confidence intervals, and other factors impacting or biasing the representativeness of the sample).
    2. Lessons learned from data collection in the field.

All documents, databases, reports, surveys and findings related to the home visits will be kept confidential by the consulting firm and sent to Water.org upon completion of the assigned work.

Location

The on-site client visits will take place in: Bahia and Minas Gerais for Banco do Nordeste do Brasil and Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina for Central Cresol Sicoper.

Deliverables and Key Dates

The third-part firm will submit the following deliverables:

• Deliverable 1: Inception report (in English) which includes proposed sampling method and selection of clients to be interviewed, work plan and schedule to ensure timely compliance, survey team training plan and data quality assurance practices.
• Deliverable 2: Final dataset of minimum 140 in-person household surveys which should be cleaned and validated using mWater platform.
• Deliverable 3: Final field (in English) report which includes final sample interviewed and lessons learned from data collection.

Water.org anticipates that this assignment will be completed by Jul 15, 2025. Water.org understands that activities and timelines per activity may change over the life of the contract; however, an approximate timeline is below:

Tentative Timeline

2025

Kick-off meeting (Water.org and third-party firm)

March 31

Deliverable 1: Inception report deadline

April 15

Training on survey and mWater platform (from Water.org)

April 16 – 18

Survey implementation (household visits)

April 21

Deliverable 2: Final database deadline

July 10

Deliverable 3: Final report deadline.

July 15

Qualifications

Qualified third-party firm should have experience in survey design, data collection, training enumerators, and overseeing data quality management in Brazil. Having experience with microfinance institutions and the water and sanitation sectors in Brazil are additional advantages. Applicants must have at a minimum the following qualifications:

1. The proposed staffing plan includes at least one native or fluent English speaker.
2. The proposed staffing plan includes a sufficient number of qualified enumerators to collect the household surveys in the partner geographies.
3. Demonstrated experience in data collection using quantitative and qualitative methods including field surveys in Brazil.
4. Demonstrated experience and familiarity with the water, sanitation and hygiene sector and/or microfinance sector in Brazil (preferred).

Request and submission of proposals

Interested third-party firms should submit a proposal in English containing both technical and budget components and should not exceed 10 pages. The proposal should include:

1. Description of the third-party firm’s qualifications relevant to the present consultancy.
2. Experience in consulting or similar studies regarding the scope of the present consultancy (particularly in rural areas or when there are not exact addresses).
3. Brief description of the project.
4. Proposed plan to reach clients and coordination with loans agents for each partner institution.
5. Staffing plan (training, organization and distribution of personnel).
6. Quality control practices or protocols for quality control of data collected.
7. Timeline and workplan with key milestones.
8. Project budget (see sample budget template below). The budget cannot exceed US$15,000. All taxes should be included in the budget. The third-party shall be responsible for payment of all taxes. The final approved budget shall be fixed and not subject to negotiation.
9. CVs of the principal investigator and project team.

How to apply

Full proposals should be sent by e-mail to Rafael Castillo rcastillomanrique@water.org. Subject line must indicate “Monitoring of interventions in Brazil – 2025”.