BACKGROUND
Transparency International (TI) is the global civil society organisation leading the fight against corruption. Through more than 100 chapters worldwide and an international secretariat in Berlin, Germany, TI raises awareness of the damaging effects of corruption and works with partners in government, business, and civil society to develop and implement effective measures to tackle it.
Since March 2022 (until February 2026), the TI-Secretariat (TI-S) and Transparencia Mexicana (TMX) have jointly implemented the project, ‘Anticorruption for the many, not the few (AC4ALL)’, funded by the European Union Delegation in Mexico.
AC4ALL aims to apply anti-corruption efforts to contribute to address inequality for those most left behind in Mexico (particularly women, youth, and ethnic minorities) by creating conducive conditions to promote more efficient and transparent fiscal and budgetary policies for the many and not for the few. At the global level, the project aims to assess the role of transnational corruption and its detrimental impact on inequalities, understand the fundamental mechanisms used by these enablers and advocate for concrete reforms and enforcement measurements to disrupt these networks and effectively address leakages in public resources.
The national and subnational components implemented by TMX are based on a threefold strategy that consists of the following outputs in Mexico: i) Knowledge fusion leads to a “ready to install” set of tools for progressive and inclusive fiscal reforms, policies, interventions or initiatives for federal, state and local governments in Mexico; ii) Fiscal and budgetary leakages are identified, tracked and controlled in both public revenues and expenditure; and iii) Tools and interventions acknowledge and incorporate existing public opinion on anti-corruption, inequalities and fiscal justice, while including gender and social inclusion parameters.
At the regional and global levels, the TI-S leverages its network of more than 100 national chapters to raise awareness of transnational corruption, monitor commitments at the national, regional and global levels and advocate for transformative change by fostering constructive partnerships with multi-stakeholder actors and initiatives.
Moreover, the TI-S work alongside TMX to close the loopholes in the global financial system that allows corruption schemes to thrive, and the billions stolen from citizens to be hidden and laundered. These include grand corruption schemes that transcend borders and further fuel inequality, such as foreign bribery, rigged public procurement, and embezzlement of health and education funds, among others. The main activities under this area of work include: i) Conducting research and analysis to understand the main mechanisms, networks and potential jurisdictions systematically used by actors engaging in tax evasion or diversion of public funds including mapping authorities, global trend-setters and best practices at the global level; ii) Promoting partnerships and peer-to-peer exchanges between TMX and other TI national chapters and regional/global stakeholders to discuss these topics; and iii) Promoting evidence-based advocacy to sustain pressure from civil society organisations and international stakeholders through sustained engagement in global fora.
The project was designed with a flexible and responsive approach that allows for adaptation based on a continuous context analysis, particularly at the state and municipal level in Mexico, to identify opportunities and target interventions.
AC4ALL understands inequality as a multi-dimensional concept, where access to resources, opportunities and rights varies across individuals and groups based on their socio-economic characteristics. Gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) considerations are therefore cross-cutting for the project. The final evaluation will therefore assess the extent to which the project has effectively integrated this approach and responded to the complexity of these dimensions.
All of TI’s evaluations follow the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) evaluation criteria. The project undertook an independent Mid-Term Review (MTR) in August 2024, which generated a management response committing to follow-up on recommendations from both implementing partners. The final evaluation will assess the Efficiency and Effectiveness of this follow-up for the final 18 months of implementation, as well as the project’s Impact and Sustainability, and provide actionable learning to inform future programming. The Relevance and Coherence evaluation criteria will not be explicitly assessed in the final evaluation, as these were already addressed to a significant extent by the MTR.
OBJECTIVES OF THE FINAL EVALUATION
The main purpose of this final evaluation is to provide an external and independent assessment, prioritising the project’s impact, sustainability and overall performance, including its achievements and contribution to any positive or negative changes. The assessment will stimulate learning and may inform TI’s project design and development as well. The evaluation will also incorporate a GESI lens, examining how the project affected different groups and addressed the multi-dimensional nature of inequality for these groups.
The overall objectives of the evaluation are the following:
● Provide an independent, systematic and objective assessment of the impact and sustainability of interventions, evaluating the project implementation, the outcomes of the project against the initial goals specified in the project’s MEL framework and the extent to which the net benefits of the project are sustainable over time.
● Document lessons learned, good practices and challenges to generate clear forward-looking and actionable recommendations to guide TI-S, TMX, partner organisations, Civil Society Organizations (CSO) sub-grantees and other stakeholders in developing strategies for future related work at national level.
● Assess the degree to which the recommendations and commitments made in the Mid-Term Review and management response were implemented.
The key audience for this evaluation is TI-S, TMX, CSO sub-grantees and the core stakeholders of the project, to sustain the results of the project and inform the design of future related projects. The European Commission, in particular the Delegation of the European Union in Mexico, may use the evaluation for accountability and verification purposes.
KEY ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED
The following OECD DAC criteria and evaluation questions should be addressed during the project evaluation but are subject to discussion and agreement between TI-S and the evaluator(s) during the designing of the evaluation approach in the inception phase. Given the prior mid-term review of the project, the final evaluation should streamline the proposed evaluation questions to avoid duplicating efforts and should include a stronger focus on Impact and Sustainability and prioritise the final two years of implementation subsequent to the Mid-Term Review.
Some questions may be deprioritised or omitted to reduce the workload, especially if they were adequately addressed in the earlier reviews or are less critical for the final evaluation of the project. The evaluator(s) is free to further prioritise these questions in the proposal and suggest others as deemed necessary. The key issues below also reflect the initial interests of the donor but have/will also need to be further validated with them.
EFFECTIVENESS AND EFFICIENCY (Weighting = 20%)
● To what extent have the recommendations and management response actions from the mid-term review been effectively followed up for the remaining implementation of the project? In particular, this should assess:
● Follow-up co-ordination between TI-S and TMX
● The efficiency and effectiveness of the third party CSO sub-granting process and results
● Wider co-ordination with governmental counterparts and other members of civil society in the national context
● How far did internal management decisions from both implementing partners and external factors (e.g. conflict, political instability, donor coordination) influence the effective and efficient implementation of the project, and its ability to meet its objectives?
● Did the project demonstrate value for money in achieving its results relative to the resources utilised?
● Were the further activities and outputs of the project consistent and coherent with the planned chain of causality, goals and objectives for the last 18 months of implementation, and how efficiently were they implemented?
IMPACT (Including on inequality) (Weighting = 40%)
● What were the main trends and drivers of inequalities in the policy area of intervention which (i) influenced the project and (ii) the project can be said to have had some influence or impact on (addressing or mitigating)?
● What key outcomes and impact were achieved, including any unintended positive or negative effects? Did outcomes and impact vary across distinct groups of interest? How were these intended and unintended results leveraged or addressed? To what extent can these changes be attributed to the project, and what other factors contributed?
● To what extent did the project contribute to change or influence the transparency and efficiency of fiscal and budgetary policies perpetuating inequality in Mexico? This includes: − What evidence exists of the project’s contributions to improved policymaking? − To what extent can these changes be attributed to the project, and what other factors contributed? − Which strategies show most promise in contributing to systemic shifts?
● To what extent has the project both benefitted and effectively included marginalised groups, such as women, youth, and ethnic minorities?
● To what extent has the project contributed to shaping the narrative of anti-corruption as a means to address inequalities, at the national level in Mexico, across Latin America at the regional level, and globally through and across the wider TI Movement?
● To what extent has the project contributed to increasing action of the detrimental impact of illicit financial flows and corrupt money flows on the development and inequality agenda at the regional and global levels (through advocacy and knowledge-sharing)?
SUSTAINABILITY/LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE (Weighting = 40%)
● Does the project have an exit strategy, embedded in the overall delivery, to allow sustainability of and capitalisation on relevant results? What measures have been put in place to ensure the adoption of initiatives at national and local levels in Mexico?
● Are the benefits of the project likely to continue once funding has ceased? Does the sustainability of results vary across different groups of interest (such as women, youth and ethnic groups)? What risks could threaten the sustainability of the outcomes, and to what extent have mitigation strategies been implemented?
● Is there an enduring commitment of partners (including government institutions and CSO allies and sub-grantees) and target groups to continue with the implementation of the project’s initiatives and what is their likely level of future engagement?
● To what extent has the project helped establish conditions for continued anti-corruption reforms and fiscal/budgetary policy shifts?
● What lessons from the project can inform the design of future programming, including potential for replication or scaling, – and the design of EU-funded initiatives aiming to support anti-corruption reforms and interventions to reduce inequality, particularly for marginalised groups, in Mexico?
METHODOLOGY
The evaluation, including its approach and methods, will be planned, agreed and conducted in close consultation with the project team. The exact methodology should be defined, discussed, and agreed upon with TI-S during the inception phase, but the evaluation Consultant(s) is ultimately responsible for the overall methodological design of the final project evaluation and is expected to propose methods that they consider most appropriate and that could further strengthen the quality of the data and/or close any gaps identified to achieve the aims, which should be adapted to the requirements of this ToRs.
The final project evaluation should use a participatory approach engaging relevant staff at TI-S and national chapter/partner levels through structured methods. Both quantitative and qualitative data should be utilised in assessing the project. The evaluation can include but is not necessarily limited to the following methods:
● Desk review of relevant documents.
● Individual and/or group online (or possibly in person) interviews with key stakeholders from project implementing partners (TI-S and TMX), donor representatives, as well as governmental counterparts and civil society stakeholders supported with sub-grants in Mexico at the national and local levels.
● Survey/ questionnaires targeting TI staff involved in implementation and relevant external stakeholders.
The Consultant(s) should present a detailed statement of the proposed review methods in their technical proposal. The Consultant(s) is expected to refine the scope and methodology of this assignment during the inception phase in cooperation with TI-S and provide a detailed plan.
EXPECTED DELIVERABLES
This evaluation is expected to be mostly desk-based and conducted remotely. The Consultant(s) is expected to deliver:
● An inception report outlining the proposed methodology, stakeholders for interviews, data collection tools and timeframe of planned actions.
● An online workshop with TI-S and TIMX to discuss evaluation findings and possible recommendations for future projects.
● A draft evaluation report for review and comments by TI-S and TMX, including annexes. While considering the comments provided on the draft, the Consultant(s) shall use their independent and impartial judgment in preparing the final report.
● An online validation meeting with key stakeholders (including the donor) to discuss findings and feedback on draft report, with design, facilitation and documentation of a participatory workshop, incl. PowerPoint presentation, to discuss and validate the draft report.
● A final evaluation report documenting the evaluation process and results following a clear structure. The evaluation report will contain the findings, conclusions, and recommendations as well as lessons learned with action-oriented recommendations. The final evaluation report will be submitted to the donor alongside the final annual report by the end of May.
Applicable guidance and quality standards:
• The findings should be referenced.
• The evaluators’ approach should be guided by/reference the TI's Impact Matrix methodology, as a framework to assess domains of change when assessing the impact elements of the Project, and TI’s Data Quality Checklist for assessing the data available (or constraints/limitations thereof) available for the evidence base/evaluation.
• The research should abide by ethical protocols including participant confidentiality and privacy, and by data protection regulations. TI’s MEL guiding principles and ethical standards are contractual obligations which must be met by all our evaluators.
• TI’s Evaluations website: where we publish all our project evaluations and management responses.
The final report should be maximum 30 pages in length, excluding the annexes and the executive summary, and should be accompanied by a summary PowerPoint presentation.
All evaluation deliverables are to be submitted in English, in electronic form, in accordance with the agreed deadlines. The Consultant(s) is responsible for the quality of the final product, including editing and quality control of language.
Annexes to the Final Report should be kept to an absolute minimum, only those annexes that serve to demonstrate or clarify an issue related to a significant finding should be included. Existing documents should be referenced but not necessarily annexed.
SELECTION CRITERIA
Core competencies
● People’s skills: The Consultant(s) should be able to mediate the expectations of the different internal stakeholders to produce a strong independent assessment that will genuinely serve the learning purposes set out in this ToR.
● Work style: The Consultant(s) should be well-planned and organised even within a fluid working environment and have a capacity for initiative with competent analytical and problem-solving skills. The Consultant(s) should be able to maintain a strong level and flow of communication with reporting stakeholders.
● Language: The Consultant(s) should possess excellent command of English and Spanish. Technical competencies The Consultant(s) should have the following qualifications:
● Substantial experience in conducting evaluations, including in the anti-corruption field.
● At least five years of proven relevant professional experience in international development, of which at least three years should be in monitoring & evaluation of multiple country projects & programmes.
● Proven experience in the conceptualisation and facilitation of participatory approaches.
● Highly motivated and committed to the values of transparency and integrity.
● Experience in anticorruption and inequality reduction will be considered an advantage.
● Experience in gender analysis or GESI integration in evaluations of international development projects will be considered an advantage.
● Experience working with NGOs, CSOs or social enterprises, especially advocacy oriented organisations will be considered an advantage.
● Regional experience and a good understanding of political and socio-economic issues in Mexico and/or Latin America is necessary.
● Experience with the evaluation of EC-funded projects is desirable but not necessary.
In addition, due to the European Commission procurement rules, application is open only to Individual consultants OR Legal persons established in one of the following countries:
• EU/EEA Member States and the UK.
• IPA II beneficiaries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Republic of North Macedonia).
• Developing countries and territories, (included in the OECD-DAC list of ODA recipients), which are not members of the G20 group. Applications from Mexico are allowed as this is the main country of implementation of the project under evaluation.
• Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs) covered by Council Decision 2013/755/EU of 25 November 2013 on the association of the overseas countries and territories with the European Union.
REMUNERATION AND COSTS
The Consultant(s) should provide their estimated total fee as a lump sum or as standard daily or hourly rates as gross inclusive of taxes and other charges.
For Consultant(s) based in the EU, EEA and Switzerland
Transparency International e.V. (TI Secretariat) is registered as a Business Entity in Germany with VAT identification number DE273612486. To determine the Value Added Tax (VAT) implications of this tender, we kindly request that the Consultant(s) fill out the VAT Form for Tenders/Vendor Form (instructions inside the form) and submit the completed and duly signed form along with their email application.
Consultants based in Germany and do not charge German VAT must confirm their small entrepreneur status.
The VAT Form for Tenders/Vendor Form is available below. https://files.transparencycdn.org/images/TendersVendor-Form.docx
LOGISTICS AND SPECIFICATION
The Consultant(s) is estimated to work approximately 35-50 days of effort between March and May 2026. This is subject to review at the inception phase when a detailed timeline will need to be fully confirmed. We have a strong preference for the inclusion of a local data Consultant in the country of implementation (Mexico) and a GESI expert wherever possible
Data protection
When you respond to this tender and submit your application, you provide consent that Transparency International e. V. keeps your application materials for the period of ten years according to German legal requirements. Afterwards Transparency International will delete your application and any personal data included in it. If you have any questions, please reach out to dataprotection@transparency.org
Guidelines for handling overhead and travel expenses
Overhead
Regular overhead expenses associated with the Consultant(s) maintaining their place of business, such as rent, telephone, utilities or stationery, are included in the Consultant’s professional fee, except where explicitly agreed otherwise in the contract.
Travel
Travel and accommodation expenses will as far as possible, and where applicable, be recovered from the institutions and companies hosting events or using the outputs provided by the Consultant(s). Where such cost recovery is not possible, all travel is subject to prior approval by TI-S staff responsible for the financial management of the Project or TI Budget Line that will support the costs of travel. TI shall not issue travel advances to the Consultant(s). For accommodation or travel by air, rail or coach, they will instead have to contact TI-S that will make travel arrangements on the Consultant’s behalf. All travel booked by TI-S will include travel health and accident insurance with worldwide coverage and Economy class only; accommodation will aim to achieve best value for money up to a 4-star category. Consultants shall be entitled to invoice TI-S only for local transportation and visa cost (if applicable). Subsistence allowance (per diems) and expenses for individual meals cannot be claimed. These are part of the Consultant's business expenses
SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS
The application should include the following documents in English:
● A proposal of how the assignment will be approached, including a budget and tentative timeline.
● Motivation letter focusing on concrete examples relating to the necessary skills and experience required in these ToRs.
● Curriculum Vitae of lead Consultant and any additional team of members (including in this case roles and responsibilities)
● Two samples of relevant previous work (confidentiality guaranteed).
● Contact details for at least two independent referees with in-depth and proven knowledge of the applicant’s expertise and relevant work experience.
Please indicate “AC4ALL Final Evaluation” in the subject line of your email application. Applications should be sent in English by email to AC4ALLevaluation@transparency.org by close of business of 14 November 2025.
Please note that only shortlisted applicants will be contacted.
The Transparency International Secretariat is committed to creating an inclusive work environment where diversity is valued and where there is equality of opportunity. We actively seek a diverse applicant pool and therefore welcome applications from qualified candidates of all regions, countries, cultures, and backgrounds.
Selection of candidates is made on a competitive basis and we do not discriminate on the basis of national origin, race, colour or ethnic background, religious belief, sex, gender identity and expression or sexual orientation, marital or family status, age or ability. We kindly ask applicants to refrain from including in their application information relating to the above as well as from attaching photos.
ToR Link on Website: Final-evaluation-of-project-Anticorruption-for-the-many-not-the-few-AC4ALL.pdf