Strategy Consultant for Stakeholder Analysis & Engagement Strategy – ToR

Terms of Reference (ToR)

SNV seeks to engage a consultant to support SNV teams in further developing, validating, and putting into practice SNV’s Value Proposition (VP) and influencing priorities, with a particular focus on audiences, decision-making contexts, and practical application across the organisation. The focus of this assignment is on helping SNV clarify how its Value Proposition is used with different audiences, in different decision-making contexts, and in day-to-day engagement across the organisation.

Building on recent internal work to articulate SNV’s Value Proposition and influencing priorities, this consultancy will support SNV in strengthening their practical use. The aim is to ensure that colleagues can apply them in a consistent yet flexible way across proposals, donor engagement, policy dialogue, communications, partnerships, and other external interactions.

The consultant will work closely with SNV teams to support the development and refinement of a stakeholder analysis and engagement approach. This work will help SNV better understand how its influencing efforts interact with complex systems and decision-making environments, and where SNV can most effectively position itself. The outputs will serve as practical reference materials that SNV colleagues can adapt to different audiences and contexts, while maintaining coherence with SNV’s mission and positioning.

The consultancy will be implemented primarily through remote collaboration over an estimated period of two months. The consultant will work in close coordination with SNV’s influencing, communications, business development, and leadership teams. All outputs are intended for internal ownership and use, enabling SNV teams to further embed, adapt, and scale the results through training, engagement, and ongoing application.

Key deliverables

• Consultant workplan and shared workspace (i.e. a dedicated online repository for documents, tools, and collaboration materials)
• Draft stakeholder analysis and VP engagement strategy
• Final stakeholder analysis and VP engagement strategy
• Internal mapping toolkit ready for use

Background

SNV is a global development partner rooted in and working across Africa and Asia. With a team of approximately 1,600 people, our mission is to strengthen capacities and catalyse partnerships that transform agri-food, energy and water systems to enable sustainable and more equitable lives for all.

In a rapidly evolving development landscape, SNV is refining its Value Proposition and influencing priorities to ensure that its contributions lead to meaningful and sustained impact across the diverse contexts in which it works. While SNV has a clear articulation of its areas of work and approach, there is an opportunity to further strengthen the understanding of priority stakeholders and how influencing contributes to systems transformation and development outcomes.

This consultancy will support SNV in strengthening its communications and influencing efforts by co-developing shared guidance and practical tools. These will help SNV communicate its value and mission consistently across proposals, donor engagement, policy dialogue, media interactions, and partnerships, and ensure that insights are translated into usable outputs that can be taken forward by internal teams.

Objective

The overall objective of this consultancy is to support SNV in establishing a validated, stakeholder-informed foundation that enables SNV’s Value Proposition and influencing priorities to be applied in practice, ensuring positioning is clear, credible, and consistent across audiences and contexts.

Specifically, the consultancy will support SNV to:

1. Refine and validate its stakeholder mapping by consolidating existing internal intelligence and applying appropriate external analytical input.
2. Develop a stakeholder analysis and engagement strategy that reflects how key audiences make decisions, what influences them, and where SNV has meaningful entry points, with sensitivity to regional and country contexts.
3. Strengthen coherence between the Value Proposition, influencing priorities, and real-world engagement needs.
4. Translate audience insights into practical outputs that colleagues can use in conversations, proposals, positioning, and influencing work.
5. Ensure a clear handover of tools and insights so internal teams can embed, adapt, and scale the work beyond the consultancy period.

Job Description

Scope of work and deliverables

The consultancy will be implemented in close collaboration with SNV’s VP for Influencing & Positioning team and structured around four tightly sequenced phases, from onboarding to handover. The consultant will support SNV through four sequenced phases, from onboarding to handover, with SNV retaining ownership of strategic direction and decisions throughout.