Request for Proposals: Consultant for Strategic Planning

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to solicit proposals from consultants experienced in strategic planning for health and human services-focused non-profits with budgets in the range of $2-5M. The selected consultant will guide Uplift Center for Grieving Children’s Board of Directors and staff through a long-range strategic planning process.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Uplift Center for Grieving Children’s (Uplift) mission is to help children grieving a death heal and grow through their grief, while strengthening families, communities and professionals' understanding of how best to respond to their needs. Now in its 24th year of operations, Uplift was established in 1995 as part of the Bereavement Program at St. Christopher's Hospital. Recognizing a growing need for high-quality, free grief services in Philadelphia, the program incorporated as an independent nonprofit in 2000. Since that time, Uplift has grown from offering a handful of support groups to providing a suite of grief and mental health support services, including in-school grief groups in more than 125 public, charter, and parochial schools across the city, Family Services programming supporting youth alongside their caregivers, as well as caregiver-only support and skills-building services; acute-loss supports for schools and communities following the death of a student or other school community member; specialized grief supports for Spanish-speakers, LGBTQIA+ youth, and justice-involved students; training programs for front-line professionals to create more trauma-informed and grief-sensitive communities; and the Philly HopeLine, a free telephone helpline staffed by Uplift’s Masters-level clinicians, offering immediate support for students and caregivers experiencing grief, stress, anxiety, or other stressors. Over the 2021-22 program year, Uplift supported nearly 5,000 youth, caregivers, school community members, and front-line professionals across its programs. Based on the needs of the youth and families served, Uplift provides its services in-person (at school, partner or community site, or at its office in East Falls) or virtually.

In Philadelphia, the need for high-quality, trauma-informed, and accessible mental health support is highest among those most deeply impacted by violence, systemic inequities, and marginalization: the city’s BIPOC population. For almost 25 years, Uplift has served under-resourced, often marginalized communities of Black and Brown families. More than 80 percent of current participants identify as African American and, based on the school zip codes in which the organization operates, more than 75% are part of low-income households, residing in neighborhoods that experience higher rates of violent crime. All of Uplift’s services are free to participants and do not require health insurance, immigration status disclosure, nor pre-authorization. Uplift seeks to meet the rising urgency for high-quality services while reducing barriers to access fostered by historic and systemic inequalities.

Core components of Uplift services include:

• In-school grief groups: student-centered grief supports for groups of 8 to 10 similarly aged youth meeting for an hour weekly, across 6 weeks. Students meet with an Uplift clinician and explore grief experiences, learn emotional regulation skills, identify connections with peers and trusted adults, and discuss emotions. Specialized curricula are used for groups supporting justice-involved youth, LGBTQIA+ students, and Spanish speakers.
• Family Services grief groups: grief groups for youth and caregivers in the evening, meeting with an Uplift clinician separately but concurrently (if in-person) exploring grief experiences, coping and emotional regulation skills, as well as offering peer-to-peer caregiver support and tools. Parental skills-building groups lasting 10 weeks through the “Resilient Parenting for Bereaved Families” program are available for those caregivers further along in their grief process who are looking for practical building blocks to better support their family unit.
• Acute Loss Services: whole-school supportive programming following the death of a student, teacher, or other community member, using the Post-Traumatic Stress Management protocol to help school communities communicate and stabilize, employ well-being strategies, and restore feelings of safety. “Legacy groups” are offered for those students closest to the loss, and function similarly to in-school grief groups, with participating students grieving the same death.
• Philly HopeLine (PHL): free helpline staffed by Uplift’s clinicians, offering immediate, on-demand support for students, caregivers, or teachers experiencing grief, stress, anxiety, or other stressors, as well as warm connections to complementary support services. Special hours are designated for Spanish speakers and those identifying as LGBTQIA+ and translation services are available in over 100 additional languages. In-takes and registrations for weekly Uplift programs are centralized through the PHL, counselors or teachers may call to inquire about supports for students and families, and school staff may also call to request acute-loss supports.
• Professional Training: Uplift’s only fee-based program (offered on a sliding scale) providing workshops and seminars to frontline professionals such as school counselors, city agencies, nonprofit staff, and first responders. Trainings address issue- or community-specific topics and provide specialized training to help participants better understand and respond to grieving individuals. Within schools receiving weekly in-school group facilitation, professional trainings can help create a continuum of care for grieving students and create more grief-sensitive communities overall.

Uplift serves as a national expert in children’s grief support services. The organization’s services have never been more needed as the City of Philadelphia finds itself in a grievous position. The grief and trauma resulting from the current homicide, violent crime, suicide, and substance use disorder rates is vast, but when considered alongside the effects of a pandemic causing over 3,500 additional city deaths to date, high rates of poverty, and racial and social injustice the results are crushing.

PRIOR STRATEGIC PLAN:

The 2017-2020 Strategic Plan laid out an ambitious plan for Uplift’s work, including: training staff in evidence-based, trauma-informed interventions; growing services in communities with the highest levels of traumatic grief; growing post-crisis response work in coordination with the Network of Neighbors; implementation of better outcome measurement tools; expansion of services; establishing Uplift as the subject matter expert in the region; diversification of funding with a focus on government funding; and building up the Board education and governance. While some changed focus or shifted in their execution, Uplift explored, examined, and implemented most of the goals laid out in that strategic plan.

Building on this prior plan and looking to the next three years, Uplift began a new strategic planning process in 2021. Following an RFP selection, Uplift’s strategic planning process included a deliverable to create a formalized diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) plan. During this time, Uplift’s Executive Director stepped down and the Board of Directors suspended the strategic planning effort and selected an interim ED while a new Executive Director was identified. The interim ED continued the DEI plan. In 2023, Uplift hired a new Executive Director.

Uplift is now ready to address questions about the mission, role, and continued work of Uplift. Now, having celebrated our 20th anniversary, and having successfully implemented most of the tasks and objectives outlined in its 2017-2020 plan, Uplift looks to its next plan to articulate the clear business, financial, and programmatic strategies which the organization will pursue over the next three years.

As part of this new strategic planning process, Uplift is committed to incorporating its work to date and continued commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization. To date, Uplift’s staff have engaged in a series of facilitated conversations about racial trauma and equity in the workplace and in Uplift’s clinical work. Administratively, Uplift has created an Operations Committee to include staff voices in human resources and operational decisions and implemented new policies focused on equity, including an equitable vendor selection policy. The Board has also engaged in this process including education around the history of program participants’ racial trauma, non-exploitive fundraising and communication practices, utilizing a DEI lens for other Board-related work, and continued recruitment of diverse Board Members.

There is more anti-racist work that Uplift must do to ensure the organization is equitable to all staff and providing the safest care for program participants, and it is imperative that we engage a consultant with the skills and professionalism to ensure the work is done correctly.

SCOPE OF WORK:

Uplift Center for Grieving Children is seeking a consultant with strategic planning and facilitation experience to provide the following services:

1. Work with the Board Strategic Planning Committee, management level staff, community partners, families, and other relevant stakeholders to articulate a clear strategic plan for Uplift for fiscal years 2025-2028 (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2027).
2. This plan should identify specific program, development, and operations objectives, through a DEI lens, for the organization to pursue over the next 3 years in pursuit of its mission.
3. Conduct an internal and external survey to evaluate Uplift’s success in achieving its goals outlined in its 2017-2020 strategic plan, review the previous general SWOT analysis of internal and external perceptions of the organization, and recommend, and if so perform, another SWOT analysis.
4. Integrate a DEI analysis into the organizational assessment to identify areas for additional DEI goal setting for integration into the pillars of the strategic plan. This analysis may involve additional focus groups and stakeholder conversations.
5. Develop a timetable of implementation with specific measurable benchmarks, objectives, and tasks to be accomplished to achieve goals. Identify clear, measurable outcomes for how to measure organizational and strategic effectiveness, impact, and success.
6. Establish a framework and process for the organization’s leadership to effectively implement the strategic plan and monitor progress toward achievement of goals and objectives.
7. Facilitate all meetings and provide leadership, direction and expert consultation and advice related to the development of an effective strategic plan, including successful implementation.
8. Deliverable should be a clear, easily consumed, strategic planning roadmap that incorporates DEI into all aspects of the plan, accompanied by a strategic planning timeline, implementation, and evaluation methodology.

Specific areas that need to be addressed in the creation of a 3-year strategic plan include but may not be limited to:

1. An examination of Uplift’s mission, vision, and values and the incorporation of any changes found necessary.
2. A thorough assessment of infrastructure needs including, but not limited to space, technology, human capital, and financial resources.
3. An analysis leading to developing goals around Uplift’s continued growth with a timeline of progressive objectives and measures of success to achieve those goals.
4. The development of a diverse and sustainable financial and programmatic model to achieve goals. This new plan will lay the framework and roadmap for Uplift’s next three years.
5. Helping Uplift implement changes into the various pillars of its internal and external work around racial trauma and its effect on the children and families with which the organization works.
6. Development of next steps for the DEI process for Uplift and incorporation into the strategic plan.
7. The creation of programs, policy, and procedures that will build equity into the fabric of Uplift’s organization, including bringing the voices of participants and partners into the conversation and program planning.

The proposal will provide an executive summary of the work that will be performed by the consultant and a detailed work breakdown structure, with timeframes, of the steps that will be taken to develop a strategic plan.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS & TIMELINE:

Uplift is seeking proposals from applicants who can address all of the above stated issues and goals and who can provide additional expertise to help the organization and the community it serves achieve a successful project outcome.

1. While Uplift understands that completing this project requires significant and active Board and staff involvement, it is important to note that the applicant selected will be responsible for completing all project work products and final deliverables (e.g. writing organizational assessments, writing the actual strategic plan, etc.). The staff will not be expected to be involved in writing work project products or final project deliverables.
2. Applicants are to propose which aspects of the project will require Board and/or staff involvement and include the expected time requirements for all activities involving their participation.
3. Proposals must include a clear description of the applicant’s plan to complete all of the project components (i.e. in what order will the projects be completed, how long each component will take to complete, etc.)
4. Applicants must include in their project timelines “check-in” points for Uplift to be provided with project status updates. As work products/deliverables are completed prior to the established check-in points, applicants will be required to send Uplift and the project funder(s) these materials to facilitate the status update meetings and/or conference calls. The successful applicant will be responsible for setting up the check-in meetings/calls, preparing an agenda for each meeting/call, sending out meeting invites and writing meeting minutes.
5. In addition to the check-in meetings and/or conference calls, the applicant will be expected to present a status update on her/his preliminary findings and recommendations prior to writing the final project deliverables and strategic plan.
6. Uplift will be responsible for implementing the recommendations from all final deliverables; however, it is expected that the consultant selected will provide the agency with ongoing coaching and implementation support as needed, per letter of agreement.
7. It is expected that the total cost for this project will not exceed $35,000.

EVALUATION CRITERIA:

In awarding a contract for consulting services to develop a long-range strategic plan for the organization, Uplift will examine a number of factors and criteria will include:

1. The extent to which the proposal addresses the stated management issues and clearly describes the scope of work;
2. Specific plans or methodology to be used to perform the services;
3. Qualifications and experience of consultant in engaging in strategic planning and DEI consultation;
4. Availability for work to be conducted during the Winter and Spring of 2023-24 with strategic plan draft presented to the Uplift board no later than the April 2024 board meeting; and
5. Project cost.

APPLICATION PROCESS & PROCEDURES:

Please provide a complete written response to this RFP that does not exceed 15 single-sided pages. Proposals should include:

1. A brief Executive Summary;
2. A description of the applicant’s general approach to strategic planning and DEI consultation, including methodology, perspective, or philosophy that guides your work with organizations in this undertaking;
3. A list of project goals and deliverables to be created with a detailed timeline for each deliverable, goal, and overall project completion;
4. Any budget detail relevant to the pricing of the proposal;
5. Credentials and qualifications of key personnel who will take responsibility for working directly on this project, including three references;
6. Example(s) of a finished strategic plan created by your company.
7. At least three references of prior clients.

Applicants must submit one electronic copy of the proposal. Please note that Uplift will not return any proposals it receives and will not reimburse applicants for any costs they incur in developing their proposals.

Send completed proposals by August 31, 2023, to Keri Salerno, [email protected]