Decisive structures: procurement format options for MSD programmes and their different implications

As the size and ambition of flagship MSD programmes has grown, expectations of transparency and fair competition in their procurement processes have too. Increasingly, such programmes involve not just one, but an entire consortium of implementing organisations. This raises the complexity when it comes to designing programmes effectively and procuring them fairly.

This paper addresses three issues at the heart of procurement decisions for MSD programmes:

• Contested power relations between donors and implementers in MSD consortia
• Divergent financial models
• Contrasting procurement formats that polarize competitive and co-creative formats

It expands the conversation to include a spectrum of five procurement formats. It expands on the preconditions, advantages and disadvantages for each format, as well as implications for consortium building. It concludes with specific lessons for different types of organisations involved in MSD procurement.

About the MSD Procurement Series

This paper is the first in a series of four. It is a collaborative product of a group of accomplished MSD practitioners and donors who worked together voluntarily in knowledge clinics over four months in early 2020 to synthesise their accumulated knowledge and experience of procurement arrangements for programmes that use the MSD approach. 

Watch the BEAM webinar - How to do MSD procurement: practical insights from donors and implementers - where clinic participants discussed their findings.

Links to the other papers are below.