Will bidding for USAID contracts be different under Trump?

Suppliers bidding for USAID business should expect “targeted” changes under the incoming Republican administration rather than a massive overhaul of how the agency does business, the audience at a Devex event heard on Monday. Mike Shanley, CEO of Konektid — a consultancy that advises organizations bidding for work with USAID — said that a lot would depend on who took charge of the agency, with experts keenly examining the list of potential candidates. However he referenced the previous Trump administration, in which Mark Green held the position. Green has generally been highly regarded among the aid community and introduced several popular reforms. There have been fears that Trump would appoint a hard-liner who wants to make deep aid cuts, but Shanley said he understood that senior positions were likely to be filled with “Trump One” people — continuity candidates likely to take a similar position to Green. Particular areas such as gender or climate might see changes in funding, Shanley said, but he also stressed that it would take a long time for changes in funding policy to filter through, because USAID is still spending money allocated by the current U.S. Congress. And in two years’ time, he said, the next set of congressional elections could favor the Democrats, and shift control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. “It can take a year or two before a lot of those major budget priorities come through and that could be around the time the midterms happen,” he said. “You might have one or both chambers of Congress flip.” Shanley said that USAID was likely to continue to focus on the New Partnerships Initiative, a project that began under Green and was continued under the current leader, Samantha Power. The initiative aims to expand the number of implementers working with USAID and is focused in part on working with local suppliers — those based in the country where work is done — but also on encouraging smaller suppliers in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, in order to bring in organizations that can deliver better results. Shanley also talked about the key elements that new suppliers need to have in order to break into the USAID market — first identifying what kind of awards your organization’s past performance qualifies you to compete for, then identifying what procurements are likely to be in the pipeline, and finally building partnerships and relationships with other organizations. “It’s not looking at what’s coming out now on sam.gov,” he said. “It’s understanding what’s coming out 12 to 24 months from now, and who are the partners to be talking with, whether you’re subbing or priming, to be in a consortium to bid for each of those opportunities.”