Scoping Consultant Resilient States Project - Virginia; Independent Contractor

Common Ground USA (CG-USA) fosters collaboration across differences to address America’s biggest challenges and build a society where everyone can belong and thrive. As part of Search for Common Ground, with 40 years of global conflict resolution experience, CG-USA transforms conflict into cooperation with programming focused in the United States. At CG-USA, we believe that most Americans want to overcome the divisions we face in our society and that we all have a role to play.

Engaging across political and other divides, we see disagreement as an opportunity to transform conflict into cooperation to solve our most pervasive problems. All of our work is rooted in an evidence base where we strengthen the five vital signs of peace: safety, social cohesion, institutional legitimacy, personal agency, and resourcing peace.

The Project:

The Resilient States Project is a collaboration between CG-USA and Over Zero – that convenes and empowers broad-based networks of diverse leaders to build resilience and mitigate risks for division and political violence in key states (currently: Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas). Our networks unite diverse leaders across various sectors, ideologies, and geographies. These networks work together to transform division and risks for conflict within their states and unify their communities.

From , the first phase of this project’s four pilot states showed the promise and potential of the Resilient State model to mobilize and coordinate new and diverse leaders with the aim of reducing risks and harms in their states. This next phase of the project will look to expand to new states and contexts and further incorporate learning from across the project.

Goals and Objectives:

The consultancy should consider the following goals and objectives:

• Conflict analysis that studies the causes, actors, and dynamics of conflict, providing a “social diagnosis” of the state. CG-USA is looking for actor and issue analysis, as well as both long-term structural and shorter-term analysis of potential triggers of conflict in the state based in part on key interviews with critical stakeholders and desk research;
• Stakeholder mapping that identifies key stakeholders in the state with broad-reaching sectoral, cultural, geographic, or political influence;
• Networking and relationship-building with civil society organizations, networks, and leaders who have some measure of interest, capacity, or influence to mitigate political violence in the state, including possible listening sessions for key communities or sectors, to help CG-USA begin to establish relationships towards building a broad-based network of state leaders.

Geographic Locations:

The consultant must be based in Virginia. This role may require some travel within the state for interviews, meetings and other convenings.

Logistical Support:

The consultant will be responsible for organizing their own logistics, and these costs must be reasonably budgeted into the proposal. CG-USA can provide some support in arranging logistics as agreed upon based on the consultant’s proposal. At least one CG-USA staff member will be the point of contact and manager of this project.

In addition, the Resilient States Project team will share background materials including the project proposal, related desk research, pre-existing relationships, etc.

The Resilient States Project team expects the following deliverables from the external consultant(s) as they correspond to the timeline and budget:

• An initial inception report and budget;
• Regular progress updates;
• A final report detailing research, outreach, and recommendations listed above; and
• Any additional deliverables as may be required by the consultancy according to the approved inception report, including specific introductions or completion of events.

Timeline:

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis with a first round of review starting on February 2, and the Resilient States Project team will follow up with individual candidates to generate a specific timeline for the work.

Budget:

Candidates are encouraged to…