Consultancy: Impact evaluation of Donkeys for Africa project

The Donkey Sanctuary (TDS) is looking for an experienced and reputable organisation / individual consultant to conduct an impact evaluation of our project called “Donkeys for Africa”.

The Donkeys for Africa (DfA) project, in partnership with Eseltjiesrus Donkey Sanctuary (EDS), emerged from an African Donkey Welfare workshop in 2015, where participants identified a need for a communications portal to share information on projects, successes and failures of their work in donkey welfare. The Donkey Sanctuary was approached to fund the project and has been the sole external funder since 2017.

The purpose of the project to date has been the production of a newsletter six times a year which is distributed via email and shares case studies, stories of best practice, and feature donkey welfare organisations and events. In addition, they host a website which features an extensive library of resources and research. All this is aimed at promoting donkey welfare across the Continent of Africa; the project does not involve direct service provision to donkeys.

As part of our commitment to developing an evidence-base portfolio, The Donkey Sanctuary is commissioning an impact evaluation to determine if, and how well, the DfA project 2017-2022 has worked to create change by promoting donkey welfare across Africa, while demonstrating the extent of the impact and how it came about. Findings of this evaluation will guide future project design.

Based on this, we expect that this evaluation will provide the following outcomes:

1. TDS and EDS have greater understanding and evidence of the change brought by the project, including positive and negative intended and unintended consequences.
2. The DfA project is analysed following the OECD DAC criteria, with special focus on its relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and impact.
3. Lessons for future design and interventions are learned based on findings, conclusions, and recommendations of this evaluation.

The DfA project aims to promote donkey welfare across the Continent of Africa. The overarching question we seek to answer through this consultancy is:

• To what extent has the DfA project generated significant positive or negative, intended or unintended, changes since its inception in 2017 to date?

We expect this evaluation to follow the OECD DAC criteria as the evaluation framework, with special focus on relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, and impact.

Due to the nature of this project and the current information available, we anticipate this evaluation to use at least one of the following approaches: outcome harvesting, outcome mapping, and/or domains of change.

We believe this evaluation will require a mixture of in-person and remote data collection to engage with stakeholders across different countries in Africa. Our preference will be for a South Africa-based Consultant to carry this out (but we still welcome proposals that involve an alternative way to deliver the required outcomes, should this not be possible).

PLEASE NOTE: It is important that you do not approach Eseltjiesrus Donkey Sanctuary or Donkeys for Africa in connection with this requirement, unless and until a formal contract is being entered into. If you do approach either party about this requirement at any stage prior to being contracted to complete the work, you will be automatically excluded from this process.