RFQ submission Development of a Project and Grant Management System for Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership (RWVL) Nigeria
ActionAid Nigeria, through the Renewed Women’s Voice and Leadership Nigeria (RWVL Nigeria) Project, works to strengthen women’s rights organisations and advance gender equality through grant making, capacity strengthening, and institutional support.
As part of its grant making function, the project manages applications from multiple partner organisations across Nigeria. This process includes the submission of concept notes and budgets, multi-level technical and financial reviews, approvals, and grant disbursement.
To improve efficiency, transparency, and accountability, ActionAid Nigeria seeks to develop a Project and Grant Management System to automate and manage the full grant lifecycle.
Objective of this Call
The objective is to engage a qualified firm or consultant to design and deploy a web based Project and Grants Management System that supports the RWVL grants application, review, approval, and disbursement workflow.
1. Project Title
Procurement and Deployment of an End-to-End Digital fully integrated Grants Management, governance and compliance management system
2. Objective
To design, customize, deploy, and support a secure, scalable, and fully integrated Grant Management, governance and compliance management system. System that manages the entire grant lifecycle from registration to final reporting for approximately 200 NGO grantees.
TERMS OF REFERENCE (ToR)
Procurement of a Comprehensive Grant Management, governance and compliance management system
Part I Call for submission
1.0 Scope of work.
1.1 The selected vendor will be responsible for:
- Design, development/customization and integration of a web-based platform for Grants project management system
- Development of dashboards for applicants and internal users
- System configuration/customization
- Secure hosting (cloud preferred)
- Data migration (if required)
- API integration capability
- Development of applicant interface for registration, login, and submission of applications
- Creation of a multi-level review workflow for Coordinators, Project Manager, Finance Team, and Audit (Workflow automation )
- Integration of document upload and storage system
- Deployment of the Grants Management System on a secure hosting environment
- Implementation of approval and feedback system across all review stages
- Inclusion of grant disbursement tracking, including upload of payment evidence and amount disbursed
- Deployment, testing, and user training
- Ongoing Technical support & maintenance within the agreed timeline
2.0 Organisational Needs Assessment
2.1 Volume and Scale Requirements
- Between 100 – 200 partner organisations are expected to register and apply for grant through the grant portal of ActionAid Nigeria.
- Six, ten or more thematic funding categories, grants may be categorized under.
- Multiple program/project reporting cycles (monthly, quarterly, annually).
- Multi-stage grant implementation tracking.
- Committee-based approval workflow.
- Financial grant, documentation upload and tracking.
Implication:
System must support multi-tenant access, concurrent users, structured workflow automation, and scalable database management.
2.2 Compliance & Due Diligence Requirements
Each applying Partner organisation must:
- Register on portal
- Enter management and board member details
- Upload KYC documents
- Upload CAC registration certificate
- Upload annual report
- Upload audited financial statements
- Upload proof of address (utility bill)
- Fill in bank account details
- Fill in profile details (email, phone number, address), of three contact persons CEO, Finance Director and Director or programme or their equivalent position in the organisation.
Implication:
System must include:
- Document verification workflow
- Mandatory document gating (cannot proceed without required uploads)
- Expiry tracking for compliance documents
- Secure document storage with encryption
- Audit trail of document submissions
2.3 Thematic Grant Categories
Funding areas include:
- Women Empowerment
- Youth Engagement
- Girl led research
- Governance & Tax Justice
- Institutional Strengthening
- Humanitarian Response
- Health
- Education
- Poverty Alleviation
- Add More....(Up to 20 categories with preference to increase and reduce)
Implication:
System must support:
- Multiple funding windows
- Category-specific application templates
- Customizable evaluation criteria per category
- Budget caps per category
- Separate review panels per category (if required)
2.4 Application Requirements
Concept note must include:
- Problem statement
- Objectives
- Intervention strategy
- Log frame
- Expected outcomes
- Budget breakdown
Implication:
System must support:
- Structured form-based submission
- Log frame builder (preferred)
- Budget builder (Excel-style or template-based)
- Auto-validation of totals
- Version control
- Save-and-resume capability
2.5 Workflow & Approval Process
Grant lifecycle:
- Registration
- Application submission
- Administrative review
- Grant committee review
- Scoring
- Approval/rejection
- Notification to applicant
- Disbursement tracking
- Stage-based activity tracking
- Monitoring & reporting
Implication:
System must include:
- Configurable workflow engine
- Multi-level approvals
- Role-based permissions
- Grant committee scoring interface
- Conflict-of-interest declaration feature
- Automated notification engine
- Digital approval logs
2.6 Reporting Requirements
Grantees must:
- Submit monthly and quarterly reports
- Upload financial reports
- Upload receipts
- Submit narrative progress updates
If reports are not submitted:
- Automated recurring notifications must be triggered until submission.
Implication:
System must support:
- Automated reminder engine
- Escalation notifications
- Overdue report dashboard
- Financial reconciliation tracking
- Attachment storage with indexing
- Lock next disbursement if report not submitted
2.7 Financial Management Requirements
- Track approved budgets
- Track disbursement tranches
- Monitor expenditure against budget
- Upload financial receipts
- Financial compliance verification
Implication:
System must:
- Integrate budget tracking with reporting
- Support milestone-based disbursement
- Generate financial summaries
- Support export to accounting software (API-ready preferred)
2.8 Governance & Transparency
Given the scale and potential donor scrutiny:
System must support:
- Full audit trail
- Activity logs
- Committee decision documentation
- Transparent scoring matrix
- Data export capability
- Role-based dashboard views
3. Identified Gaps Without a System
Without a robust GMS, risks include:
- Manual errors in due diligence
- Lost documents
- Weak audit trails
- Delayed reporting
- Poor monitoring of grant milestones
- Reputational risk
- Governance weakness
- Difficulty scaling beyond 200 NGOs
PART II: ANALYSIS REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT (ARD)
4. Functional Requirements
4.1 Registration & Due Diligence Module
System must allow:
- NGO self-registration
- Management & board member profiling
- KYC document upload
- CAC certificate upload
- Annual report upload
- Audited financial report upload
- Utility bill upload
- Mandatory field enforcement
- Admin review & approval before application access
4.2 Grant Application Module
Must support:
- Multiple funding categories (6–10)
- Configurable application forms
- Logframe submission
- Budget template builder
- Auto-sum and validation
- Document attachments
- Save & resume
- Submission confirmation
4.3 Workflow & Review Module
Must include:
- Role-based access
- Administrative screening stage
- Committee review stage
- Scoring matrix
- Weighted scoring capability
- Approval routing
- Conflict-of-interest declaration
- Digital audit logs
4.4 Notification & Communication Engine
System must:
- Send automated email notifications
- Send report submission reminders
- Send overdue alerts repeatedly
- Notify award winners
- Notify unsuccessful applicants
4.5 Disbursement & Financial Tracking
Must support:
- Tranche-based disbursement
- Milestone-based releases
- Financial upload validation
- Budget vs expenditure tracking
- Report-linked disbursement gating
4.6 Monitoring & Reporting Module
Must allow grantees to:
- Submit monthly reports
- Submit quarterly reports
- Upload financial reports
- Upload receipts
- Submit narrative updates
Admin must have:
- Dashboard view of report status
- Overdue tracking dashboard
- Grant performance summary
- Category-based reporting
4.7 System Administration & Governance
System must provide:
- Full audit trail
- Activity logs
- Role-based access control
- Data encryption (at rest & in transit)
- Backup & disaster recovery plan
- GDPR-compliant data management (or equivalent)
5. Technical Requirements
- Cloud-hosted (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud preferred)
- Mobile-responsive interface
- API-ready for integration
- SSL encryption
- Multi-user concurrency
- Scalable architecture
- Data export (Excel, CSV, PDF)
- Role-based dashboards
6. Non-Functional Requirements
- High availability (99% uptime minimum)
- Secure document storage
- Performance under 200+ concurrent NGO users
- User-friendly interface
- Training materials included
7. Deliverables & Timeline
- Because the Project has already commenced since NOV/Dec 2025, The Grants Management System (GMS) is supposed to Run “Start-to-Start” along with the project. Now it’s highly critical that this project of GMS start and finish within 2 Months.
- System design document
- Configured GMS
- User acceptance testing (UAT)
- Staff training
- Go-live deployment
- 12-month support plan
- User manuals for administrators and applicants
- Training of relevant staff
8. Qualifications and Criteria for Selection
Interested firms or consultants should demonstrate:
- Proven experience in developing web based platforms or Grants management systems with 3 or more similar clients
- Strong understanding of Automations, workflow based systems and user role management.
- Experience working with NGOs or development organisations
- Capacity to deliver within the required timeline
- Availability of a qualified technical team
- Data security certifications (ISO 27001 preferred)
- Soc 1 type 2 IT audit report
- References from NGOs or donor agencies
9. Evaluation Criteria: The evaluation criteria shall be;
- Technical capacity (30%)
- Functional compliance (30%)
- ISO certification (10%)
- Soc 1 Type 2 Audit report (10%)
- Cost (10%)
- Implementation timeline (20%)
Strategic Requirement summary
Given the size to be about 100 to 200 Partners or more, there is a need for:
- A configurable workflow system
- Strong compliance tracking
- Robust audit logs
- Automated reporting enforcement
- Scalable cloud infrastructure
Model:
Vendor should state clearly which of the following products their design is modelled after/with:
- Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud & Grants Management
- Blackbaud (Grantmaking / Financial Edge NXT)
- Foundant Technologies (GLM / Grant Lifecycle Manager
- Fluxx
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 + Power Platform
Interested applicants are required to submit:
- Company or consultant profile
- Evidence of similar work completed
- Brief technical approach (maximum of 3 pages)
- Cost implications
- Proposed timeline for delivery
- Contact details of at least two references
Place of Work & Administrative Support
- The consultant will work out of his/her own location except during physical meetings with the project team, using his/her own work tools.
- The selected consultant will sign a contract with AAN for the purpose of this consultancy and be provided with clearly outlined terms of reference.
Duration of Contract
The duration to deliver on this contract is 2 months.
Ownership of outputs
Outputs of the assignment and related database, platform, backup etc. shall belong to AAN.
Terms of Payment
ActionAid shall deduct the statutory 5% With Holding Tax (WHT) for individuals and 10% for limited (LTD) and public companies (PLC), and remit to relevant authority. On the date payment becomes due, the consultant will submit an invoice requesting payment and clearly stating his/her Tax Identification Number (TIN).
SHEA and Safeguarding
ActionAid is committed to preventing any form of sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse (including child abuse and adult at-risk abuse) and responding robustly when these harms take place in line with our zero-tolerance approach to Safeguarding concerns.
Reporting Lines
The consultant will work with, be accountable directly to the Specialist, Women’s Rights Unit, ActionAid Nigeria and all documentation and resources developed will be submitted to same.
Submission of Expression of Interest
Interested candidates are invited to apply by sending a resume detailing competency and links to previous work done. Applications must be submitted electronically in one Microsoft Word file to: procurement.nigeria@actionaid.org
using the subject line ‘EOI – Grant Management System Development (RWVL Nigeria)’ not later than April 15, 2026. Failure to adhere to instructions on submissions could invalidate your application.
Please note that only the successful applicant will be contacted.