Preparing a bid takes a lot of work — and calculation. Each donor tends to have specific rules for implementing partners, including how much to pay project team members.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, for instance, caps the salaries and allowances of its contractors and strictly ties compensation to salary history, not taking into consideration bonuses and other benefits. Its Australian counterpart, AusAID, uses a remuneration framework for short- and long-term consultants which it says is “benchmarked against other aid agencies and Australian labor market standards” and “ensures that adviser remuneration represents value for money and is appropriate to the type and level of technical expertise required for each particular task.”
For recruiters, the challenge therefore is not only to find people with the right set of skills. They must also find experts who would agree to such donor-prescribed remuneration terms.