Invitation to Tender - Amnesty International UK MEL Services
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL UK: AUDIENCE, BRAND & ATTITUDE TRACKING
ABOUT US
As a global movement of more than 10 million people, Amnesty International is the world's largest grassroots human rights organisation. We investigate and expose abuses, educate, and mobilise the public, and help transform societies to create a safer, more just world. We received the Nobel Peace Prize for our life-saving work. Amnesty International UK is a national section of this global movement. We have around half a million supporters, members, and activists in the UK.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
In 2022, Amnesty International UK embarked on a bold strategy focused on effecting deep, long-lasting change for human rights. This strategy is centred on three interconnected goals:
- Goal 1, Change attitudes to human rights: By 2030 human rights will be better understood, valued, and defended by increasingly large sections of the public. Racist, sexist, misogynistic homophobic, transphobic, and other stereotypes that facilitate human rights violations will be declining in public and political discourse.
- Goal 2, Build a powerful movement: By 2030 more people, especially people or groups who currently have less social power, have the connectedness, access, protection, resources and will to stand up for their rights and those of their communities.
- Goal 3: Win human rights victories: By 2030, Amnesty International UK and our partners will have won key human rights victories on the way to securing long-term sustainable change for people in the UK and around the world.
In 2022 we commissioned a significant piece of research into the attitudes of people in the UK towards human rights. This research helped to identify the key audiences we need to focus on, the barriers they face when it comes to supporting human rights, and the most effective ways to reach and influence them. These groups fall squarely within the ‘mainstream’ of the UK population and do care somewhat about human rights, but there are a variety of reasons preventing them from viewing human rights as something they should care more deeply about. Based on this research, we have developed and begun to implement a strategy focused on overcoming the barriers that these audiences currently face. We are now seeking to establish a way to regularly monitor and understand our progress in reaching these audiences and changing their attitudes.
In addition to this, we are also seeking to re-establish other external monitoring services that we do not currently have in place, including brand tracking and political monitoring. We view this as establishing a new holistic approach to monitoring progress towards our strategic goals, and in particular the following objectives:
- People in the UK care about and promote human rights.
- Our work is visible to our target audiences.
- We are influential and persuasive.
SCOPE
We are looking to commission the following monitoring services:
Attitude tracking
We want to understand and be able to track regularly how attitudes to human rights are changing within our target audiences and in the UK as a whole: how are we effecting a shift from somewhat caring to caring a lot about human rights? We also want to understand what might be driving any changes in attitudes in the UK and to what extent the barriers identified through the research are being broken down. We would want this regular monitoring to be representative of the UK and of our target audiences, and we would want to be able to segment and explore the data based on demographics and any other available data that might enhance our understanding of why attitudes might be changing. We are also keen to ensure we truly understand any regional (and national) divergences in attitudes, and as such would need sample sizes to be sufficient to enable this – especially with regards to the four nations of the UK (England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland).
Brand tracking
Our aim is to increase the scale and visibility of our work with mainstream UK public, rebuilding the profile of Amnesty in the UK and increasing the number of people who get directly involved with our work. We already have an effective media monitoring service in place which enables us to understand how our work is being covered in the media and who it is reaching. However, we do not currently have a way of systematically tracking the performance and health of our brand. We are looking to not only track the core measures such as awareness, support, trust, and brand sentiment among our target audiences, but also to understand the extent to which our brand is effective at supporting our efforts to drive income generation and participation in our work. We would also want the flexibility to be able to monitor the reach and impact of specific campaigns at key points during the year. Please note that while media monitoring is not part of this brief, we would expect the successful supplier takes our existing media monitoring service into account and ensure that the brand tracking service they are offering complements it.
Political monitoring
Influencing the people who have the power to make the rules, allocate the resources and shape public opinion is critical to our efforts to make tangible change for human rights. We are looking to gain a regular understanding of how effective we are at doing this: how are we perceived by parliamentarians? How well are we known, do parliamentarians know what our priorities are, are our messages and campaigns cutting through/having an impact? How does this compare to other charities or campaigning groups? More broadly, what media do political audiences consume, and how influenced are they by it? We are keen to look not only at perceptions in Westminster but also in Holyrood, Cardiff, and Stormont to gain valuable insights into our effectiveness across the devolved governments in the UK. There may also be occasions when understanding the perceptions of other powerful political audiences – such as mayors and political influencers – would be valuable to us.
ABOUT YOU
In the past our approach to commissioning external monitoring services has been fragmented, but we believe there could be a significant benefit to be had in sourcing this information and insight from one provider. We are therefore ideally looking for a partner who will be able to deliver attitude tracking, brand tracking, as well as political monitoring. However, we remain open to hearing from organisations that might specialise in just one or two of those areas. We are also open to considering bespoke offerings alongside off-the-shelf monitoring products that might meet our needs.
We are looking for partners with a track record of providing accurate, timely and easily digestible information to charities and who are invested in ensuring that information is used to drive decision making.
SUBMISSIONS & TIMELINE
We would be open to answering any questions you might have prior to submitting a response to this tender. If this would be of interest, please contact Helen Lindley (Amnesty International UK’s Communications Planner) on helen.lindley@amnesty.org.uk to arrange.
We ask that written submissions are received by 12:00 on Friday 16th February 2024. We will then be in touch by Tuesday 27th February 2024 to invite shortlisted suppliers to present on Thursday 7th March 2024, with a view to communicating our decision by Wednesday 13th March 2024.
We would like written responses to address the following:
- An overview of your proposed research/data collection methodologies
- How we will be able to access the information / the tools you will provide to enable us to interrogate the data.
- An explanation of how you will enable us to track our target audiences
- An outline of how you would be able to provide benchmarking and trend analysis
- Your experience successfully delivering similar solutions for charities
Tender applications will be evaluated based on your ability to meet the criteria above within the budget outlined below. Our procurement policy requires that decisions are not based on obtaining goods or services for the lowest possible price, but on value for money, where value for money is a judgement based on the best combination of the cost of a product or service, its ability to meet our requirements and the supplier’s ability to demonstrate their values align with our own. All shortlisted suppliers will be scored and evaluated using the same matrix, and we commit to providing honest and timely feedback to all parties.
As part of our commitment to ethical procurement, we will also require prospective partners to complete our ethical screening process, details of which will be provided if you are shortlisted.
SUPPORTING RESOURCES / FURTHER READING
Please follow this link to access a folder containing the following resources:
• AIUK’s 2022-2030 Strategic Plan and Theory of Change
• AIUK’s Goal One (attitude change) strategy
• Project planning documents for AIUK’s 2024-2026 attitude change work
• AIUK’s brand playbook
• 2022 market research conducted by Yonder for AIUK into attitudes to human rights in the UK
• 2019 market research conducted by Mark Diffley Partnership for AIUK into public attitudes to human rights in Scotland
BUDGET
The total annual budget for these monitoring services (to include brand tracking, attitude tracking, and political monitoring) is £62,050. This is inclusive of VAT.