Financing and Partnerships Specialist

Description of the Assignment:  

Digital PINAS aims to leverage digital innovation for inclusive growth and resilience in line with UN frameworks and the SDGs by addressing digital disparities among marginalized groups through three pillars: strengthening MSME capabilities, improving digital access, and promoting gender-responsive policies. As the programme nears completion, a key priority is ensuring the sustainability of Digital Centers supported under the programme while expanding domestic resource mobilization for digital transformation and MSME development. Under its Joint SDG Fund Results Framework, the programme is committed to supporting an enabling environment for increased LGU and private sector investment, contributing to the broader goal of mobilizing approximately USD 21 million in co-financing and complementary resources for digital transformation, and to supporting the development of sustainability plans for supported Digital Centers.

LGUs play an increasingly important role in advancing digital inclusion, improving access to government and business services, supporting MSMEs, strengthening local innovation ecosystems, and preparing communities for technology-driven change. Digital Transformation Centers/Tech4ED Centers, Negosyo Centers, innovation hubs, public internet facilities, digital skills centers, and similar initiatives serve as important platforms for these objectives, but investments are often constrained by competing priorities and limited fiscal space. Many centers also rely on varying forms of collaboration among LGUs, national government agencies, and the private sector, creating a need to identify sustainable partnership and financing models, understand the factors that drive their success, and generate practical, replicable approaches that address governance, financing, operations, accountability, inclusion, institutional ownership, and long-term sustainability. 

To support these objectives, UNDP will engage an Individual Consultant with expertise in local governance, local economic development, LGU financing and budgeting, resource mobilization, development financing, public-private partnerships, and sustainability planning. The Consultant will help develop sustainability pathways for Digital Centers that will help sustain the JP support beyond the life of the project, strengthen LGU ownership of digital transformation for MSME development initiatives, identify sustainable financing models and opportunities for additional funding and partnerships, and develop scalable partnership and financing approaches for LGUs and programme partners. Recognizing that LGUs differ in their institutional capacity, fiscal position, local partner ecosystem, service requirements, and operating environment, the assignment will not prescribe a single sustainability model. Instead, it will develop a menu of partnership and financing models and a practical framework that LGUs can use to identify and adapt the model most appropriate to their circumstances. The assignment will also build on complementary Digital PINAS initiatives, including the MSME Digitalization Policy and GEDSI Assessment and the GIDA-Ready Digital Solutions Partnership, integrating their findings, recommendations, and partnership opportunities into the consultant’s approach and outputs.

Objectives of the Consultancy

The overall objective of this consultancy is to document, assess, and synthesize good practices in partnerships that promote and sustain digital transformation and MSME development initiatives, including Digital Transformation Centers, Tech4ED centers, Negosyo Centers, and comparable facilities. Based on the assessment, the Consultant will  develop a menu of practical, legally and operationally feasible partnership and financing models that LGUs may be select and adapt according to their institutional capacity, fiscal position, service requirements, local partner ecosystem, and enabling environment.

Specific objectives:

1. Identify existing and emerging partnership and financing models that support MSME development and digitalization at the LGU level. Analyze key features of these models, including governance arrangements, financing mechanisms, stakeholder roles, resource requirements, incentives, and sustainability factors. 

2. Document and package practical, scalable, and replicable partnership and financing models suited to different LGU capacities, contexts, and enabling environments.

3. Develop a practical guidebook and decision making framework that LGUs can use to assess their capacity and enabling environment, select an appropriate partnership and financing model, identify readiness gaps, and determine the steps necessary to  adapt, establish, operationalize, and institutionalize the selected   

        model.

Qualifications

Proposal should be submitted directly in the portal no later than indicated deadline - 8 October 2026 5:00 pm Philippine Standard Time

Any request for clarification must be sent in writing via messaging functionality in the portal. UNDP will respond in writing including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry.

http://supplier.quantum.partneragencies.org  using the profile you may have in the portal. In case you have never registered before, you can register a profile using the registration link shared via the procurement notice and following the instructions in guides available in UNDP website: https://www.undp.org/procurement/business/resources-for-bidders.  Do not create a new profile if you already have one. Use the forgotten password feature in case you do not remember the password or the username from previous registration.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core principles at UNDP:  we value diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate, we foster inclusion as a way of ensuring all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, and we ensure equity and fairness in all our actions. Taking a ‘leave no one behind’ approach to our diversity efforts means increasing representation of underserved populations. People who identify as belonging to marginalized or excluded populations are strongly encouraged to apply. 

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Women, individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.