RFQ: Research Firms in South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa

How to Apply

How to Apply

Applications must be received no later than October 30, 2024 at midnight EST.

Your application should be no more than 6 pages (excluding annex of detailed cost table), and must include the elements below:

1. Organizational Capacity and Experience
   • Provide a brief statement of your organization’s capacity to complete this work
   • Identify the regions under your consideration.
   • List your experience with similar projects, particularly those involving IVR, phone, WhatsApp surveys in the relevant regions.
   • Highlight any relevant experience in financial inclusion, women’s economic empowerment, or other related topics.
2. Team Structure
   • Describe the proposed team required, including team leaders, supervisors, and enumerators for fieldwork and how they will be organized, data management staff, and any other others who will be involved in the work.
3. Organization of Work
   • Outline how you will organize deployment in each applicable region.
   • Describe your system for data collection, entry, and quality control.
4. Availability
   • Indicate the number of days required to prepare and begin fieldwork for each survey method (IVR, phone, WhatsApp) after receiving a Notice to Proceed.
   • If there are any periods during which your organization may have limited availability, please specify these dates.
5. Timeline
   • Provide an estimated timeline for completion of 250 and 500 surveys using each method (IVR, phone, WhatsApp surveys) within each appropriate geography.
6. Illustrative cost table
   • Provide basic cost estimations for surveys of 500 women in each region under consideration for each survey method.
   • Provide an annex that includes a detailed cost table in USD that includes estimates in each region under consideration for:
     1. Survey administration (e.g., IVR, phone, WhatsApp surveys).
     2. Hiring and training enumerators, translation of materials, and fieldwork coordination.
     3. Quality control measures, including supervision and data management.
   • Include in annex budget options for scaling the survey to cover sample sizes of 250 and 500 women across the regions under consideration.
   • Include in annex budget any additional costs to arrive at total expected costs, including those associated with data cleaning, coding, and management.

Questions for this RFQ were due on October 21, 2024. Find below a summary of them and our responses:

1. Contact Information: Will the FSPs provide phone numbers of the women to be surveyed, or will the data collection partner need to collect them?

The phone numbers for women in each sample will be provided to the survey firm, either directly by the FSP or via Women’s World Banking. RFQ responses should not include plans or budget for this effort.

2. Respondent Characteristics: What are the language requirements per country? What proportion do we expect to have limited/no literacy? What proportion do we expect to have basic phones?

Firms should indicate the cost of translation into one local language. Translations will be necessary for each country and the cost table will be used to evaluate similar lines between applicants.

Respondents will be customers of financial service providers and so we expect literacy and phone access to be generally present.

3. Questionnaire Access: Is it possible to see the survey questionnaire?

Due to the nature of the development of the survey, we cannot currently share the questionnaire, though can describe in general terms the sections within it. In its current form, there are 4 demographic questions, 5 questions pertaining to use of financial products and services, 12 questions regarding women’s economic empowerment, and 4 questions about the impacts of a specific product or account type.

4. Open-ended Questions: Specifically, we are curious about the expected number of open-ended questions.

There are no open-ended questions.

5. Survey Metrics: What are the survey metrics e.g., specific sample sizes for each country, rounds expected, etc.? How many iterations of the survey are expected throughout 2025?

One recent internal testing had an average survey completion time of 6 minutes and 51 seconds. We expect the average survey time will be closer to 8 minutes during deployments. Specific sample sizes are dependent on many factors and so we are requesting quotes for deployments at 250 and 500 respondents in order to evaluate costs across submissions.

We currently expect there to be 6 deployments of the survey, one each in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Kenya, and Nigeria with this subject to change.

6. Survey Length: Each survey mode listed in the RFQ (i.e., phone, IVR, WhatsApp) has a different recommended survey length. For example, 25 questions can be asked over the phone but not over IVR, and ideally not over WhatsApp. Is it acceptable to propose different survey lengths by mode when pricing, or would you prefer standard lengths for comparability across bidders?

Each survey deployment will generally require the entire questionnaire to be administered. While there may be some instances where a subset of the survey is deployed, and therefore where one survey mode may be more advantageous, we are requesting that cost tables be submitted as if delivering the full questionnaire. The specific budget for each survey will be determined by the setting, survey mode, local costs, and other factors.

7. Survey Platform: Would we consider face-to-face interviews to reach the requested sample sizes?

The intention of this survey is to be a low-cost, light-touch survey and so we do not expect to conduct these surveys in person. While it’s possible there may be circumstances that arise where in-person surveying is the best method to employ in a specific deployment, the cost associated for that will be negotiated at the time. We request that the submissions for this RFQ do not consider this scenario.

8. Firm Location: Can firms submit bids for a subset of the listed countries? Can firms based outside of the operating regions participate?

Yes. We anticipate selecting multiple firms to cover the countries in which we will deploy this survey. We highly encourage firms with experience in only one or a few countries to respond to this RFQ, while indicating those countries where they can operate. Firms outside of the listed regions can participate and should indicate where they can operate while providing support of their ability to do so.

9. Output Type: Would you like the output to be clean anonymized raw data, or are you looking for something that includes analysis? If the latter, could you please share the types of analyses you would like the partner to conduct?

We are requesting for only the provision of clean, anonymized datasets.

10. Team Bios: Would you like bios of specific team members? We typically describe the project team structure along with descriptions of the roles that each project team member plays - would that suffice?

Team structure can be submitted as the responding firm desires. We will be evaluating teams based on the extent to which there is a demonstrated ability to successfully deploy these surveys and so the team description should respond to this.

11. Indicative Budgets: Are you able to share indicative budgets? This would help us tailor our pricing as closely as possible to suit your requirements.

We have estimated that, depending on the sample size, survey method, geography, and sample, the cost per deployment should range between $10,000 to $25,000.

12. Selection Timeline: What is your process and timeline for partner selection and contracting?

We will review submissions starting immediately after the submission window closes on October 30. Our review period typically requires 2 weeks to complete, and our contracting window also requires 2 weeks. We anticipate having firms under retainer to commence the first survey deployments as early as January.

This RFP/RFQ does not guarantee or commit Women’s World Banking to proceed with the above-described work. Due to the overwhelming responses, not all candidates will be contacted.

Women’s World Banking is an equal opportunity employer for all regardless of race, color, citizenship, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran or reservist status or any other category protected by federal, state or local law.

Women’s World Banking will be unable to contract with any individual who is a US citizen or resident without an LLC or LP or similar structure.