Seeking an Evaluation Partner for our Charity Grants
Invitation to tender
Summary
This is a unique opportunity to build a long-term partnership with a grant-giving charity that is determined that every baby should experience the best start in life. The 1001 Critical Days Foundation is seeking an evaluation partner to help us understand and amplify the impact of our multi-year grants, which support innovative, community-based projects across the UK and, in time, internationally. As our funding grows each year, so too will the scope and influence of this evaluation work. This partnership offers the chance to shape a meaningful, evolving programme of learning that will not only inform our grant-making but also power our international advocacy. The insights you generate will help us champion the importance of supporting babies during the 1001 critical days on a global stage. If you're excited by the opportunity to work collaboratively, influence policy, and contribute to a global movement for babies and families, we would love to hear from you.
About us: 1001 Critical Days Foundation
Here at the 1001 Critical Days Foundation, we know that the 1001 days – from pregnancy to age two – are when the building blocks for lifelong emotional and physical wellbeing are laid down. We are determined that every baby should experience the best start in life. To deliver on this mission, we:
• fund charities delivering frontline support to babies,
• commission pioneering research, and
• advocate on behalf of babies across the world.
In all that we do, we are driven by our values to be:
• Compassionate
• Action-centred
• Collaborative
• Impactful
We are looking for an evaluation partner who shares these values and can help us to evaluate the impact of our charity grants.
Our approach to grant-giving
We recognise the importance of committing to long-term funding for charities. That’s why all our grants are for three to five years. We fund a wide range of projects delivered by charities in a family hub or equivalent setting that joins up local support and offers universal seamless access to parents and carers. All our charities are united by the drive to make a real impact for babies in the 1001 critical days. You can find out more about our charity grants here.
In our first year, we have pledged £2m to six projects over the next three to five years. This includes:
• Dad Matters, powered by Home-Start UK – Developing and scaling this innovative programme that supports babies by supporting dads.
• Literacy Volunteers (Nottinghamshire) – Expanding their Learning to Love Books programme, helping children in deprived communities (many with English as an additional language) build early literacy skills and a love of reading.
• Home-Start Edinburgh & Stepping Stones North Edinburgh – Delivering Bump Start, a programme offering holistic, relationship-based support from pregnancy onwards to reduce isolation and improve parental confidence.
• The For Baby’s Sake Trust (London) – Providing trauma-informed therapeutic support to families to break the cycle of domestic abuse, ensuring babies grow up in safe and nurturing homes.
• OXPIP (Oxfordshire) – Offering specialist parent-infant psychotherapy to strengthen the bond between parents and babies, particularly for families facing trauma, postnatal depression or disrupted attachment.
• Thrive at Five (Stoke-on-Trent) – Piloting Video Interaction Guidance at a universal level to improve early parent-child interaction and school readiness in communities facing hardship.
The size and scale of each project varies. With some charities receiving ~£25,000 per year and others receiving £100,000 per year. We will fund a similar number of projects at a similar scale every year. We may be able to fund more projects or fund larger projects, depending on our own fundraising.
Our approach to evaluation
We are looking for a research and evaluation partner that can come alongside us and provide independent expert evaluation support to us and the charities that we’re funding.
You will not be responsible for primary data collection or establishing the research methods for each charity. All charities submit a clear plan for their evaluation when they apply for a grant from us. They will collect this data and be prepared to share it with you anonymously. Your role will be to independently analyse their data. As part of this, you may offer advice to charities in refining their evaluation plans.
We are keen that each charity understands the impact they are having for babies and learning about how this can be improved. We are also interested in the collective impact and learning from across the charity grants that we give.
One of the challenges to evaluating our charity grants is that they often support parents and carers with different aspects of caring for a baby. This means that some elements may not neatly aggregate. Wherever possible, we encourage charities supporting parents in similar ways to use the same outcome measures. However, we are hoping that our evaluation partner will work with us through this challenge.
We are just starting our grant-giving journey. We will offer more grants each year. We are hoping that our evaluation partner will be able to grow with us as we fund and evaluate more projects.
Aims and objectives of the evaluation
• You will support us to provide independent insight into the delivery and outcomes of our grant-funded projects. For example:
o How has the project improved outcomes for babies and families?
o How many babies have been supported by the project?
o What was the experience of the project?
o Is there any evidence of adverse outcomes from this project?
• You will help us to highlight the lessons learned from implementation. For example:
o What are the barriers to embedding support for babies into family hubs and how can they be overcome?
o What are the best ways to ensure that services are open to all babies in their communities?
• You will enable us to assess the value of better support for babies. For example:
o What is the economic benefit of support for babies?
o Was the project cost-effective?
Anticipated activities and outputs
• Initial meetings with charities to agree an approach to evaluation and clarify what you need from them.
• Check-ins to support charities to overcome any barriers to evaluation. These could be slightly more regular to begin with as you familiarise yourselves with the charity and support them to understand your approach to evaluation.
• Analysis of anonymised data from each charity. This is likely to include:
o Activity – reach and demographic data
o Outcomes – pre- and post- intervention data
o Experience – qualitative analysis of feedback from families
• Analysis of the economic impact of support.
We anticipate two annual outputs:
1. Annual impact reports for each individual charity.
2. An aggregated annual impact report for the Foundation that compiles our collective impact and learnings across the charities that we’re funding.
Research methods and requirements
We are looking for an organisation that can provide a mixed-methods approach to this evaluation. From descriptive analysis of family demographics to quantitative analysis of outcomes and economic benefit, and qualitative analysis of feedback from parents and carers.
We are not prescriptive about specific approaches to be taken for each of these and welcome your recommendations as evaluation experts.
Funding
We recognise that the scope and complexity of evaluating our funded projects may vary significantly depending on the size and nature of each grant. Rather than prescribing a fixed pricing model, we invite applicants to propose a funding approach that they believe is proportionate, transparent, and scalable. For example, this may include funding that is a percentage of the grants that are awarded or a tiered pricing model based on grant size. We would also be open to time-based models where there is a transparency about how many days will be needed or a ‘cap’ on the total number of days needed. This is necessary so that we can plan how much funding we can distribute as grants in future years.
You may also present other innovative approaches that ensure value for money while enabling high-quality, sustainable evaluation over the lifetime of the contract. This could include describing different evaluation models with different funding envelopes.
We encourage applicants to clearly explain the rationale behind their proposed pricing structure, including how it accommodates variation in project size and complexity, and how it can adapt as our grant-making portfolio grows.
The duration of this contract will be five years, with the potential for extension.
Award criteria
We are looking for an evaluation partner that can demonstrate the following:
• Relevant experience and expertise – including a strong track record of evaluating support for babies and families. Particularly where these are embedded within communities or family hubs.
• A high-quality evaluation approach – including expertise in applying mixedmethods to diverse projects.
• Value for money – including a transparent and flexible pricing model.
Timetable
The following timetable outlines the key milestones for the evaluation partner procurement process. Please note, dates are indicative and may be subject to change.
Invitation to Tender (ITT) issued - 27th October 2025
Deadline for tender submissions - 24th November 2025
Shortlisting and meetings with potential partners - 24th – 28th November 2025
Appointment of evaluation partner - 1st December 2025
Contract start date - 15th January 2026