Productive Use Financing Facility: Customer Verification & MEL Support

Introduction 

CLASP’s Clean Energy Access program focuses on using energy efficiency to drive and accelerate the affordability, and social and environmental benefits, of access to clean energy throughout the Global South. CLASP’s Productive Use Financing Facility (the Facility) provides procurement subsidies and enterprise development grants (EDGs).

The Facility will improve uptake of income-generating equipment, unlock private investment in productive use equipment (PUE) markets at scale, and rapidly accelerate PUE market growth globally. The Facility will also generate data on PUE market activity and the developmental impacts of PUE usage, helping to address the longstanding dearth of high-quality data and knowledge gaps across PUE technologies and national markets. Much of this data has historically been derived through numerous phone interviews with end users.

The first phase of PUFF launched in 2023 and, over two years, supported the sale of nearly 16,000 PUE across six geographies. This next phase of PUFF, which launched in April 2025, aims to support 10,000 PUE sales over the next 3.5 years. The second phase of the Facility will operate across the off-grid, mini-grid, and grid-connected (utility) sectors in the following target countries: Kenya, Ethiopia and Nigeria.

Data collection methods in PUFF 1.0 relied heavily on phone-based end-user interviews. However, based on learnings from the first phase, CLASP seeks new, more effective approaches to sales verification and fraud detection, including hybrid and in-person strategies. In-person warehouse spot checks will remain a core component of the verification process.

Background

The verification and monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) component of the Facility will provide a wealth of quality learnings for a data-hungry sector. Consumer impact research is critical to the program’s success and influence. MEL for the program will investigate how procurement subsidies can impact and improve development outcomes for SMEs and individuals. Development outcome indicators include, but are not limited to, changes in income, reduction of drudgery, time-savings, access to financial and banking services, and business expansion.

PUFF 1.0 highlighted several challenges related to customer verification. These include:

• The limited effectiveness of phone-based surveys for confirming sales and usage
• The need for real-time validation of customer and inventory data
• Reliance on self-reported sales records

CLASP welcomes proposals that integrate stronger fraud detection and verification tools, including in-person verification methods, photographic or geo-tagged evidence, unannounced spot checks, and innovative triangulation strategies.

Timeline

Activities will begin in September 2025 and run through to March 2029. CLASP hopes to engage a team for the life of the program, which will likely have future rounds beyond March 2029.

CLASP anticipates that customer verification activities will commence in October 2025 and will take place on a rolling basis. Teams responding to this RFP should anticipate finalizing the verification and MEL design no more than one month after contracting.

The funding window opens on June 30, 2025

Deadline for Application: 19:00 EDT on 13 July 2025

Application includes registering as a Consulting Partner and submitting the technical and financial proposals per the instructions below.

Scope of Work

CLASP seeks to hire a contractor or consortium to revise and enhance the existing verification and MEL framework developed under PUFF 1.0. The contractor will work from a pre-existing theory of change, survey instrument, and sampling methodology, and will be responsible for refining these tools in light of implementation learnings and contextual changes in PUFF 2.0.

The contractor(s) will be expected to work closely with CLASP and other program partners to update, implement and deliver the following:

• Updated MEL strategy and sampling methodology, with justification
• Refined verification and fraud mitigation protocol, incorporating in-person verification methods
• End-user verification and impact assessment survey mechanism
• Strategy and tools for inventory verification and unannounced spot checks
• Quarterly datasets (cleaned), plus reporting templates for internal/external use

Indicative Contractor(s) Activities – finalized in collaboration with the contractor(s)

• Align on the goals and objectives of the research, refine workplan, familiarize themselves with the companies, technologies, and consumer demographics within the scope of the Facility
• Revise and update existing consumer impact research methods to ensure that this MEL work is aligned with related efforts in the sector and follows best practices
• Design appropriate research plans to measure development impacts
• Directly administer or coordinate administration of survey tool with end users impacted by the Facility
• Consolidate and clean consumer impact survey response data
• Make raw data available to CLASP on a timely basis as requested and/or determined prior to project kick-off
• Refine development impact analysis with CLASP

The contractor can also expect to provide occasional support to CLASP’s program reporting efforts.

Key Qualifications

The contractor(s) should have experience using sophisticated, sound statistical mechanism to ensure the data collected is robust and minimizes implementation costs. This includes:

• Significant sample sizing for each participating company
• Strata identification and segmentation
• Randomization mechanism
• Experience implementing real-time verification mechanisms (e.g., mobile reporting dashboards, time-stamped photographic evidence, etc.) is strongly preferred

The monitoring and survey design and implementation plan must be easily scalable to match the quantity of equipment sales that occur in each participating country over the life of the program.

CLASP encourages firms or teams with deep experience related to M&E for development, results-based financing, and/or energy access to submit proposals. Experience with and access to modern M&E software and technology (i.e., tablet-based software with photography and geo-coding functionality) is preferred. Experience with M&E in East and West Africa’s off-grid solar market is preferred.

Submittal

Register as a Consulting Partner

Interested parties must register as a CLASP Consulting Partner.

Submit Technical and Financial Proposals

Interested parties should submit separate technical and financial proposal documents to financing@clasp.ngo. The file should be named as per the following example:

“Contractor Name: PUFF 2.0 Financing Facility RFP.”

The project proposal is limited to 15 pages. Proposals longer than 15 pages will not be considered. The Project Proposal must include the following elements:

• Biography or organizational profile
• Examples of relevant, related work and associated references
• Evidence of organizational ethics and anti-corruption policies and practices
• CVs and related summaries of experience and qualifications of applicable staff
• Detailed proposed timeline of deliverables and milestones for the M&E activities listed in the Scope of Work section above (i.e., items 1 and 2)
• Proposed approach for the Scope of Work

The Financial Proposal must include the following elements:

• Detailed budget that includes a breakdown of costs for staff time, expenses, and incidentals for the MEL activities listed in the Scope of Work section above (i.e., items 1 and 2)

Proposals must include a dedicated section detailing the fraud detection and mitigation strategy. This should clearly explain how the authenticity of sales data will be verified and what measures will be implemented to prevent the manipulation of customer records.

For the purposes of budgeting, timelines, deliverables, and milestones, please assume that there are roughly 10,000 product sales supported over the life of the program. Financial proposals should account for the program’s multi-year timeline and should account for the possibility of staff pay raises, promotion, and turnover.

Submissions are due by 19:00 ET on 13 July 2025. 

If necessary for the selection process, CLASP may request additional information from any applicant. All questions should be sent to financing@clasp.ngo. 

Optional At This Stage – Fill Out Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ)

All contractors must fill out the PQQ before working with CLASP. This can be voluntarily completed at the RFP stage but will be mandatory if a contract is awarded.

The PQQ is a thorough due diligence screening aimed at gathering legal and financial information on prospective partners/vendors. Contract awards are conditional upon passing the due diligence screening. Organizations that have already completed the PQQ do not need to complete it again unless the structure of the business has changed. If you are unsure, please email Andrea Testa (atesta@clasp.ngo) to determine next steps.