Current Vacancies

Capacity Building Consultant (Request for Proposal)

Download the PDF for more information (version updated on January 17, 2025) and/or view the posting details below.

• Deliverable: Non-Profit Organization Capacity Building Services

• Duration: 8 months (February - September 2025)

• Budget: $20,000 (inc. HST)

• Reports to: Executive Director

• Position Type: External Consultant

• Location: Remote, anywhere in Canada

• Proposal Deadline: January 20, 2025 (extended to January 22, 2025! at 11:59 pm PT)

About Us 

Women in Urbanism Canada (WIUC) is a national not-for-profit organization working to address gender-based inequalities within Canadian cities. 

We are a women-led community working to transform Canadian cities into more equitable, enjoyable, and sustainable places for everyone. 

Our mission is to inspire and mobilize women-led transformation in Canadian cities. 

Our guiding principles are to be caring, sharing, collaborating, amplifying, supporting, and mobilizing. 

Background

The idea for WIUC emerged in late 2018, inspired by the book Change of Plans: Towards a Non-Sexist Sustainable City and the New Zealand-based non-profit, Women in Urbanism Aotearoa. Background work began in fall of 2021, with WIUC being publicly launched in January 2022. A Founding Board of Directors was established in November 2022, growing the team from two Co-Founders to ten Directors. In January 2023, the organization was incorporated as a national non-profit organization, soon after it received its first programming micro-grant, and in June 2023, launched its membership program. In spring 2024, WIUC hosted its first-ever Annual General Meeting, and shortly thereafter, received a capacity building grant to help scale the organization in tangible ways. 

WIUC has recently welcomed an Executive Director and Project Coordinator to the team, and is now working to advance key priorities, including organization capacity building, JEDIIA, and other strategic approaches that will maximize WIUC’s impact. 

Learn more about the organization at www.WomenInUrbanism.ca. 

Objectives

WIUC aims to co-create an actionable 3-year strategic plan and to align other organization strategies, policies, and frameworks to it. The consultant should build on our previous achievements and refine existing approaches to help us advance our mission and have a greater impact. 

We are seeking competitive proposals from qualified consultant(s) that have capacity building expertise within non-profits, ideally with a focus on urban, gender, and/or other intersecting topics. The successful consultant(s) will work alongside the Executive Director, with additional guidance from the Board of Directors, and further input from members. 

Scope

The project scope includes the following deliverables:

1. Strategic Planning (60%)

2. Strategic Alignment (25%)

3. Evaluation and Impact (15%)

The project shall include completion of the following key tasks:

1. Administrative

   • Project Plan and Management

2. Strategic Planning

   • Contextual Research

   • Community Engagement

   • Strategic Plan

   • Fund Development Strategy

3. Strategic Alignment

   • Strategy Alignment

   • Policy Alignment

4. Evaluation and Impact

   • Progress Indicators and Evaluation Framework

   • Impact Report Template

Request for Proposal 

The proposal should include the following sections:

1. Organization Profile

1. Contact information

2. About the organization

3. Consultant profile(s) 

4. Summary of collective expertise (e.g., strategic planning, working with marginalized/vulnerable groups, community engagement, theories of change, intersectional feminist principles, urban design, etc.)

2. Project Plan

1. Approach

2. Methodologies

3. Work Plan (e.g., description of phases, activities, timelines, milestones, and deliverables)

3. Budget

1. Anticipated budget for each phase (and proposed add-on services for our consideration)

4. Previous Work

1. 2-3 examples and associated outcomes of comparable projects

2. 2-3 past/current client references and contact information

5. Appendices

1. Any additional information you’d like to share with us that did not fit in the other prescribed sections

Submission

If you would like to work with us to build our organization capacity, we encourage you to submit your proposal via email to hello@womeninurbanism.ca with the subject line including “Capacity Building Consultant Proposal” before January 22, 2025. 

Your application should include the required sections (up to 10 pages, not including the appendices) in one document (PDF) labeled with your organization’s name and the submission type (e.g., Organization-Name_Capacity-Building-Proposal). 

We encourage organizations to identify their team’s relevant equity-deserving identities (BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, Disabled, etc.) and/or lived experiences to support us in prioritizing women-led organizations and the inclusion of diverse identities and experiences on our extended team.

Selection

Proposals are thoroughly reviewed and evaluated using a screening matrix that weighs various factors, such as demonstrated expertise in strategic planning, subject matter knowledge, clarity of proposal, innovative methods, cost-effectiveness, and more. The organization(s) with top proposals may be contacted for additional information and/or an introductory call to help inform the final selection. The selected consultant(s) will be recommended to the Board of Directors, and with approval, an offer and accompanying service contract will be provided to initiate the project. 

We sincerely appreciate all proposals, but please note that only the organizations with top submissions will be contacted directly. 

If you run into technical challenges while applying or have questions, please contact us at hello@womeninurbanism.ca. 

Q & A (added on January 17, 2025 in response to email inquiries)

1. Can you share one or two examples of issues or questions that are front of mind for WIUC as it begins its strategic planning process?

• Where do we fit/how do we differentiate ourselves from others working in the space? How can we build on our existing knowledge-sharing and awareness-raising activities to make tangible impacts in communities across Canada? How do we narrow our focus and prioritize key activities to grow the organization? How do we ensure sustainable funding sources beyond this capacity-building grant?

2. Is there a separate budget allocated for honoraria to compensate members for their participation in engagement activities?

• We do have a separate budget for publicity/promotions, which we have planned to include community engagement, membership recruitment, and impact report distribution.

3. Have any steps towards strategic planning been conducted previously? 

• Very basic, informal plans were developed at the founding of the organization. 

4. The duration of the project is February - September 2025. Are there certain deliverables that have fixed deadlines within that time frame?  

• The strategic plan is a key deliverable that the completion of other tasks is dependent on. Engagement with members and development of the annual impact report should consider the timeline of an April 2025 Annual General Meeting date.