Call For Proposals – Tax Sponsor For The Odas Center At Ipas

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  1. Object

The ODAS Centre is a strategic and innovative regional partnership mechanism, officially launched in 2021, that aims to catalyze and sustainably strengthen the safe abortion movement in Francophone Africa. It brings together an ecosystem of committed actors—policymakers, healthcare providers, youth organizations, feminist networks, academic institutions, and civil society organizations—united by a common goal: to eliminate the stigma surrounding abortion, reduce the use of unsafe practices, and fully promote sexual and reproductive health and rights. The centre also serves as a platform for collaboration and learning by creating dynamic networking spaces between advocacy actors in Francophone Africa and their counterparts worldwide. Institutionally, the centre’s governance model was designed using a progressive and strategic approach. At its launch, Ipas, as the host organization, provided technical, administrative, and logistical support to the ODAS Centre. Gradually, the center took over the technical direction of its strategic plan and established itself as a key regional player committed to transforming political, social and health realities in order to guarantee women and girls in Francophone Africa effective access to safe and rights-respecting abortion services.

The center benefits from the support of a group of committed donors, almost all of whom have supported it since its inception. The center’s team is composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds from across Francophone Africa. They form the coordination team and support the ODAS movement, which comprises 271 organizations spread across the 22 Francophone African countries.

This call for proposals aims to select an organization to assume the functions of fiscal sponsor and service provider for the ODAS center (including, but not limited to, grant management, accounting, human resources, facilities, and information systems). Until now, these services were provided by the American NGO Ipas (with support from its Francophone regional office based in Côte d’Ivoire), which has agreed to gradually transfer these responsibilities during 2026, with the transfer to be completed no later than March 31, 2027.

  1. The context

Between 2021 and 2025, the Centre established and consolidated the essential elements of its institutional, strategic, and programmatic development. This has equipped it with the necessary conditions to credibly embark on a structured transition process toward a new phase of organizational maturity. It has developed its five-year strategic plan, which is currently being implemented. Furthermore, it has 271 official members within the Movement, demonstrating the richness and dynamism of its ecosystem of stakeholders. In this context, we now wish to strengthen the ODAS Centre’s regional ties by entrusting its fiscal sponsorship and support services to a West African organization, similar to the role played by Ipas in recent years. This development will dispel any perception that the ODAS Centre is not a neutral entity, while simultaneously strengthening its credibility and autonomy among the Movement’s members, as well as the capacity of West African organizations to provide support services.

West Africa has a strong pool of expertise in program design and implementation, as demonstrated by the ODAS Centre team. However, the region continues to face a structural deficit in philanthropic management support functions, particularly in administration, systems management, and operational coordination. These functions have traditionally been provided by international organizations, such as Ipas, which plays a central role in the case of the ODAS Centre. This long-standing organization has limited the emergence of genuine career opportunities for professionals wishing to specialize in philanthropic management and support functions. Consequently, these skills are less developed locally than those related to program design and implementation. Transferring these functions to an established West African structure is an important step toward strengthening the regional anchoring of operational responsibility and developing sustainable regional expertise in philanthropic management. In the long term, this development should strengthen the region’s institutional capacities and reduce its dependence on external technical and administrative support.

Given that Ipas currently performs these functions, successful candidates will need to be able to work closely with Ipas and the ODAS Centre from the second quarter of 2026 onwards to agree on the terms and timetable of the transition, and then implement it in March 2027, in accordance with the arrangements agreed upon with

Ipas and the ODAS Centre. The proposals must therefore specify all the necessary arrangements to ensure a smooth transfer of responsibilities.

  1. The criteria

The proposals will be reviewed by a transition committee established for this purpose, and the successful organization will be selected through an evaluation process. The main evaluation criteria are as follows:

  1. An organization that adheres to feminist values ​​and principles of reproductive justice, and that maintains no direct or indirect links with anti-rights organizations.
  2. An organization with proven capabilities in administration, financial management, security, information technology and human resources management, as well as strong financial leadership and reliable, sustainable and well-structured systems, enabling it to effectively fulfill the role of fiscal sponsor of the ODAS Centre.
  3. An organization with an annual budget of at least USD 1,000,000 and a proven track record in tax sponsorship and grant management from diverse funding sources.
  4. A regional Francophone African organization headquartered in West Africa.
  5. An organization that demonstrates transparency in its management, whose operating costs are in line with market practices, and which shows the flexibility necessary to meet the needs of the Movement.
  6. An organization that has a high-performing digital work environment as well as robust IT infrastructure and systems.
  7. An organization that has strong policies and practices regarding cybersecurity and the protection of sensitive data.
  8. An organization guaranteeing the operational autonomy of the ODAS Centre, the reversibility of systems and data, as well as the compatibility of its ecosystem of tools.

The detailed criteria are listed here.

We invite you to review them carefully. Each criterion specifies the verification methods that will be applied to assess the compliance of your application.

The Transition Committee also recognizes that some applicant organizations can bring added value to the ODAS Centre, exceeding the requirements of the call for proposals, particularly through their strategic advisory capacity, their influence with key governments, their knowledge of philanthropic actors and civil society organizations, as well as their reputation and mobilization capabilities. These “value-added” services will be considered in the evaluation of proposals, but will not be a mandatory criterion, and will remain secondary to the essential criteria outlined above. Ultimately, the Director of the ODAS Centre will decide whether and when to utilize these value-added services.

In the medium to long term, the ODAS Centre could consider becoming an independent entity. With this in mind, applicants are invited to describe their experience supporting organizations through institutional development processes, organizational transitions, or the creation of an autonomous entity, resulting in legal and operational autonomy. They are also asked to specify whether this potential evolution towards independence is likely to influence their interest in the proposed partnership, their level of commitment, or the approach they intend to adopt.

  1. The expected services

As part of this collaboration, the sponsor will assume fiduciary responsibility for the grants. However, the ODAS Centre will define its own governance framework, which the sponsor must recognize and within which the parties will exercise their responsibilities. The ODAS Centre will retain strategic leadership, oversight of the technical aspects of the initiative, and the other responsibilities described above.

The candidate will provide services in the following six key areas:

General administration and fund management and transfer services: The applicant must have status equivalent to that of a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States, as well as comparable status in any other jurisdiction where tax requirements affect the channeling of philanthropic funds to local civil society organizations (CSOs). These services will also include legal assistance as needed. The applicant will be responsible for receiving the majority of six grants, totaling approximately USD 2,278,540 annually, from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Foundation for a Just Society, the Foundation for a Just Society International, the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Packard Foundation, and Sida. The ODAS Center’s finance team, in collaboration with the fiscal sponsor’s team, will establish a collaborative framework and a harmonized management system. The candidate may also be required to receive and remit additional funding from US or other country foundations, as well as from bilateral or multilateral aid programs.

Grant Monitoring and Reporting Systems: – to enable the ODAS Centre to report to its funders professionally, on time, and efficiently; The Centre will manage narrative, programmatic, and outcome reports for funders through online monitoring meetings held every two months, as well as written mid-term and final grant reports. The candidate will participate in these meetings and contribute to the preparation of these reports, providing clarification on financial and administrative aspects as needed, and answering questions. They will be responsible for all financial reports to funders, in accordance with the grant agreements. In this capacity, they will collaborate with the Centre’s finance team to record and present budget information to the Centre Director and funders, as required.

Human Resources Management Services: Supporting the ODAS Centre in defining its human resources needs, sourcing candidates, recruiting, training, evaluating, and retaining qualified staff. This requires in-depth knowledge of training needs in the philanthropic sector, as well as applicable national human resources laws and regulations. The Director of the ODAS Centre will retain responsibility for all decisions and evaluations, while the candidate will provide support as needed. It should be noted that the ODAS Centre is currently developing its human resources manual, which will include its compensation policy, teleworking policy, and other human resources management provisions. Bidders will be required to commit to collaborating with the ODAS Centre in strict accordance with the policies and procedures outlined in this manual.

Financial services: ensuring the proper execution of contracts, the timely payment of salaries in compliance with legislation, and the smooth management of budgeting, cost accounting, the receipt and disbursement of funds, as well as monitoring the financial situation and preparing financial reports. The ODAS Centre is a fully-fledged support mechanism. As such, it meets the needs of a Movement comprised of several organizations in Francophone Africa. The ODAS Centre has a finance team consisting of a financial manager and a financial advisor. The applicant organization is invited to collaborate with this team to ensure the smooth operation of the financial function, while maintaining the responsiveness and quality of support provided to partners. The ODAS Centre will not develop a financial manual and will review the applicant organization’s documentation. The applicant organization may be asked to adapt some of its procedures to ensure their flexibility and suitability to the Movement’s needs. The candidate must demonstrate, in their proposal, their ability to meet these requirements.

The tax sponsor will need to open a separate bank account for the ODAS Centre. This will be a sub-account dedicated to the ODAS Centre, linked to the tax sponsor’s main account. All ODAS Centre funds will pass through this sub-account, and its management, including signing authority, will be jointly handled by the ODAS Centre and the tax sponsor.

Regarding the financial system, the fiscal sponsor will need to implement a mechanism enabling the ODAS Center to produce its own balance sheet, general ledger, and other required financial statements. This system will be overseen by the Center’s finance team, which will manage the software, procedures, and tools necessary to ensure that financial flows are conducted in accordance with the instructions of the ODAS Center Director and to meet the requirements for both incoming and outgoing grants and contracts. In 2027, the ODAS Center expects to receive six grants totaling approximately US$2,278,540, to contract with approximately 20 service providers (including communications, meeting and event planning, logistics, and travel agencies, as well as one or more venues for its annual meeting and other events), and to award approximately US$70,000 in grants to ODAS Movement members through the JLAB program, with simplified reporting requirements.

In addition to the financial services typically provided in the region, the candidate will also provide:

  • Support for payroll and expense management for staff based outside the country where the tax sponsor is established. (To date, the ODAS Centre has four staff members in Benin, four in Senegal, one in Cameroon, one in Niger, one in Burkina Faso, and seven in Côte d’Ivoire. It also has twelve focal points in West and Central Africa and Madagascar. This distribution is subject to change, as the ODAS Centre plans to consolidate certain key functions, as well as other functions as needed, in an office located in the country where the tax sponsor will be established.)
  • The organization holds a three-day annual meeting every two years, bringing together approximately 500 participants, in a French-speaking country in West or Central Africa. The next meeting will be held in October 2027.
  • The organization of various regional and intercontinental trips for ODAS Centre staff and members of the ODAS Movement.
  • Although the ODAS Centre team manages the contracting process for these services, it may request support from the candidate. The candidate will be responsible for processing payments, which will frequently require a member of their staff to attend events organized by the ODAS Centre in order to directly carry out the necessary transactions with the banks.

local. It will also provide support for expense management and logistical organization of events held in the country where the tax sponsor is based, in other countries in the region or, for some events, internationally, including the payment of hotels, airline tickets, conference rooms, interpretation services, daily allowances paid to certain participants and other logistical expenses.

  • The ODAS Centre will continue to meet the needs of Movement members in accordance with its policy of supporting the Movement. This includes supporting members’ activities, which often requires the provision of one-time financial assistance.

IT services: providing high-performance IT systems and services, including networks, computer hardware and telephony.

  • The ODAS center team needs a stable, high-speed internet connection, as they participate in many international video conferences.
  • The team members currently have laptops and some equipment. The candidate will work with Ipas and the ODAS center to identify future needs and ensure that appropriate equipment and services are made available to staff working in the offices.
  • The candidate will also be responsible for all IT troubleshooting operations, including providing staff with on-demand technical assistance.
  • The tax sponsor agrees to provide technical management of the centre-odas.org domain and all @centre-odas.org email addresses for the duration of the sponsorship, without requiring the use of email addresses from its own domain name. DNS, MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records will remain under the control of the ODAS Centre.
  • Dedicated, partitioned and encrypted cloud storage;
  • The ODAS Centre will have dedicated cloud storage, logically isolated from the tax sponsor’s other data. The data will be encrypted, both at rest and in transit, and will benefit from a documented and scalable minimum capacity. The server location will be clearly identified and compliant with the requirements of the ODAS Centre’s funders.
  • Logistics services: The sponsoring organization must be flexible in applying its administrative and logistical procedures and adapt them, where necessary, to the operational needs of the ODAS Centre, in order to enable it to implement

to carry out its activities within the allotted timeframes and to provide effective support to the ODAS Movement. The sponsoring organization’s policies and procedures must strike a balance between the requirements of compliance, transparency, and accountability, on the one hand, and the need to ensure flexible and efficient operational management in a regional environment funded by multiple donors, on the other. To this end, the sponsoring organization must be willing, where appropriate, to recognize and apply the policies and procedures developed by the ODAS Centre when they prove necessary to facilitate the implementation of its activities and support the ODAS Movement.

Office space : intended for key staff members. The selected organization must either accommodate the ODAS centre’s core team in its own premises, provided that these allow for a clear and distinct separation between the teams, or submit a plan specifying the arrangements, needs and budget required to provide office space for the ODAS centre team, up to a limit of ten staff members, if this is not possible.

You will find further details on the expected support for each of  these services in Annex A.

  1. Budget

The ODAS Center has an annual budget of approximately US$2,278,540, including costs for the sponsoring organization (the position for which you are applying), staff compensation costs, consulting and service contracts, and programmatic funding used by the Center to implement its strategy. As the sponsoring organization, your role will be to provide support to the ODAS Center, including receiving, managing, and reallocating all funding allocated to it.

The annual budget allocated to these support services represents between 10% and 15% of the ODAS center’s annual budget. It includes all costs (including overhead) related to the sponsoring organization as well as the costs of providing these services, such as accounting management of all grants, the acquisition of laptops, printers, generators and other equipment, the provision of office space, the provision of legal services, etc.

The ODAS Centre currently has six funding partners, whose grants are awarded on average in three-year cycles. Four of these grants will expire before or on the transfer date of March 31, 2027: two on December 31, 2026, one on March 18, 2027, and another, for activities, on March 31, 2027. The remaining two will continue beyond this date and will require sub-grants or other arrangements to be agreed upon between the ODAS Centre, the current host organization, and the organization that will succeed it in this role. These two grants will end on December 31, 2027.

The contract with the sponsoring organization (for which you are applying) is expected to take effect on September 1, 2026. The draft timeline outlining the transfer of responsibilities for these services from Ipas to the selected entity is included in Appendix B. This timeline will be reviewed with Ipas once the host organization is selected, and the sub-grant arrangements will be finalized at that time.

Regarding the two grants expiring in December 2026, discussions will be initiated with the funders to integrate them directly into the tax sponsorship model.

  1. Instructions

We invite you to submit a comprehensive plan outlining how your organization will deliver the services described in this document. This plan should include details of anticipated staffing levels, the main software to be used, the general procedures, your experience in providing similar services, and any other information demonstrating that a smooth transition and ongoing support can be ensured. If you believe any element of this document, the detailed criteria, or the timeline in Appendix B requires revision, please propose alternative solutions.

For each service, please indicate the planned budget allocation as well as the options you could offer with a lower or higher budget.

How to apply

If you are interested, please submit your offer (technical and financial) following the instructions in the tender notice on the Ipas Procurement Portal  no later than 11 August 2026 at 15:00 UTC

The full notice can be found at this link: https://ipas.bonfirehub.com/opportunities/243264