Contract opportunities
Find out about contract opportunities to support Wellcome's mission to improve human health – including an overview of each project, who can apply and how.
At Wellcome, we invite organisations to apply for contract opportunities that support our mission to fund discovery research and find solutions to three worldwide health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate.
We spend millions each year across a range of goods and services, including professional services, media commissions, landscape reports, research reports, equipment, software and outsourced service providers.
Here, you can find all our requests for proposals (RFPs) – including an overview of each project, who can apply and how.
Expand below to view the details of each project.
Climate and Health RFPs
Wellcome will be contracting a supplier to lead a series of global dialogues on the intersection between climate change and mental health research. The aims are to better understand regional and global research priorities, support the consolidation of a climate change and mental health area, and identify the primary opportunities for action.
Initial response deadline: 26 October 2022
Submission of RFP deadline: 11 November 2022
Eligibility: Open to all
Discovery Research RFPs
There are currently no RFPs for Discovery Research.
Infectious Disease RFPs
There are currently no RFPs for Infectious Disease.
Mental Health RFPs
As Wellcome pursues an ambitious agenda in Mental Health to drive a step change in early intervention in anxiety, depression and psychosis, it will be important to proactively identify and attend to the inherent bioethics challenges in these research areas. We are looking for a supplier for this horizon-scanning exercise, which will be the first step to mapping the wider range of mental health bioethics challenges and thus enable more in-depth bioethics research, analyses and tool development that will advance the field.
The key outputs will include:
- identification and classification of key ethics issues relevant to mental health research addressing anxiety, depression, and psychosis
- summary of current norms, frameworks and resources that exist in practice or the literature
- identification of issues where there are significant gaps, barriers and/or major areas of contention in how to attend to ethical complexities in mental health research
- identification of issues of most importance to people with lived experience as well as lived experience perspectives on the literature around these issues
- a prioritisation matrix that will enable identification of the most urgent and important areas of bioethics research to support mental health.
Full submission deadline: 5 December 2022
Eligibility: Open to all, including individuals or teams. We are seeking a supplier with a proven track record of working in mental health research/research ethics with a strong understanding of ethical issues arising from mental health research.
Mental health research presents complex and multifaceted problems that could potentially benefit from innovative ideas from other disciplines.
Wellcome is looking to contract a supplier to design, promote and manage a funding scheme that will support 5-10 researchers or groups with expertise outside of mental health. Through this scheme, these researchers will produce literature reviews assessing the application of a transdisciplinary concept or method to mental health science. The aim is to identify and explore novel applications of knowledge from domains outside of mental health science to accelerate progress in early intervention for depression, anxiety, and psychosis.
We are looking for suppliers able to work in close consultation with funders and the mental health community, and that can convene researchers across a range of disciplines and geographies.
Eligibilty: Open to all
Initial response deadline: 2nd December 2022
Please download the full RFP here. [PDF 200KB]
Other RFPs
Wellcome’s Public Engagement team is looking for a supplier to:
- conduct an assessment of where public and community engagement priorities are positioned within large-scale funders of global health and multilateral agencies with a health focus, to inform partnership building and alignment
- develop a framework and set of tools that Wellcome can use for context mapping in different countries and geographies to increase our contextual understanding of places, so that we can design and develop more effective and appropriate public engagement and participation programmes.
Eligibility: Open to all
Initial response deadline: 21 September 2022
Submission of RFP deadline: 14 October 2022
Wellcome is looking for an agency to support our work in Brussels, Germany, France and Italy across government relations and communications. For more information, please view the full RFP.
Eligibility: Open to all
Submission of RFP deadline: 11 November 2022
Through this piece of work, Wellcome are interested to understand how we build mutuality and capability in the relationship between research and communities, and understand what opportunity exists within the middle ground of ‘top down’ research efforts and ‘bottom up’ participatory engagement. We are interested to explore what reciprocal relationships look like, how benefits of new knowledge can be shared and what and who is required for communities to participate as experts alongside researchers. We would also like to understand the potential role of Wellcome in supporting and/or resourcing this infrastructure and enabling environment, which for now we are calling ‘Centres for Exchange’.
We would like to explore existing models of practice and test options for Wellcome to play a role in supporting locally designed and driven Centres for Exchange in a small number of geographies of high strategic importance to the health challenges Wellcome has prioritised. The successful supplier will work with us to develop options, test models and provide a route to explore these (overall architecture, proposed partners, budget, phasing) in one to three places.
Eligibility: Open to all
Initial response deadline: 11 November 2022
Submission of RFP deadline: 9 December 2022
We aim to make our contract opportunities open to all organisations, however there will be instances where we provide eligibility criteria based on the specific nature of what we are looking to procure. Please see each opportunity for specific eligibility criteria.
Diversity and inclusion are central to our strategy. We want to make sure everything we do – and everyone who works with us – upholds these principles. Our intention is to work with kindness and consideration and to value the wellbeing of everyone involved in the collaboration. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the application process, please let us know.
Please send in your proposals electronically and refer to the individual RFP documents above for specific timelines and response requirements.
Grants: When funding someone to do something where Wellcome expects to receive nothing in return (except acknowledgement and progress reports), this will normally be through a grant.
Contracts: When funding someone to do something where Wellcome expects to receive something in return (such as goods, services, rights or other benefits), this will normally be through a contract.
| Grant | Contract | |
|---|---|---|
| Our rights | When we award a grant, we have no right to receive anything back – except acknowledgment of our funding and reports as detailed in the grant conditions. We can require that the grant is spent on the agreed activities, but we can’t direct how those activities are carried out. We can demand repayment if grant money is spent on something else, but not if we simply don’t like the outputs. We can terminate a grant, cancelling any future payments, at any time and for any reason in line with the grant conditions. |
When we award a contract, we have the right to receive what we are paying for as specified in the legally binding agreement. Depending on the exact terms, we will be able to require a certain level of quality and punctuality. If the supplier falls short, we may be able to make them do the work again or refund the money; we might also be able to sue for compensation. A contract can be terminated only in accordance with its provisions, which may require us to give a specific notice period or make payments even after termination. |
| Tax |
We generally won’t need to pay VAT on a grant. |
VAT is added to all UK invoices. Overseas taxes are charged as applicable. |
| Process |
Grants are usually awarded as a result of an application process, with appropriate types of review and approval. Most of our grants are awarded under our funding schemes. |
Contracts are usually awarded as a result of a procurement exercise. |
We don’t want your proposal to be limited in scope and ambition. However, there may be cases where a set budget is necessary and if so, we do expect you to submit a proposal that is within that.
This is a contract and not a grant. It should be costed as part of the supplier's budget in order to complete the activity on time and in full.
We can pay in various currencies please ensure this is clear on your proposal.
The main VAT requirement is to account for reverse charge VAT at 20% on any B2B (business to business) services received from overseas. This is to provide a level playing field for all businesses, that is UK VAT is payable on services regardless of where the supplier is based. In the case of a UK supplier, the supplier will charge UK VAT at 20% on its services. Where the supplier is based abroad, no VAT is charged by the supplier but the responsibility to account for VAT is shifted to the recipient, who then accounts for the VAT as if the supply was made in the UK.
We always endeavour to provide feedback to suppliers who make it through to the interview stage. Some panels may also provide feedback at earlier stages, but this is at their discretion.
Unless specified on the RFP all contract opportunities are open to all organisations including individuals.
If the lead organisation is working with a sub-processor (collaborator), that sub-processor does not have to complete the Third-Party Risk Assessment form.
The lead organisation must however tell Wellcome who is their sub-processor and send us their independent security certificate and/or security audit report for review as required in the Third-Party Risk Assessment form.
We cannot contract to any countries on the HSBC sanctions list.
If you would like to stay up to date with contract opportunities, then please register your details here.
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The Procurement team supports Wellcome on all matters relating to procurement. We operate as business partners who provide guidance and run procurement exercises with our stakeholders.
Please do not use this address to submit expressions of interest or proposals. Please refer to the email address provided in the relevant contract opportunity document as to where these should be sent.
Here, you can find some of our previous RFPs that have now expired, including an overview of each project, to enable suppliers to understand the format and structure.
The Strategic Partnerships team is seeking an individual consultant to provide dedicated expertise on Climate and Health partnerships work as well as support Wellcome’s wider Strategic Partnerships function.
Eligibility: Individual consultant with partnerships expertise and strong understanding of the climate and health research ecosystem
Initial response deadline: 7 July 2022
Wellcome would like to partner with BIOVAC to commission a report, based on a literature review/landscape analysis, on how to build an enabling environment for the African continent to increase its end-to-end manufacture of vaccines. We are interested in understanding what the barriers to vaccine development and manufacturing on the African continent are and what strategies and actions can be taken to increase the manufacture of vaccines.
Eligibility: Open to all countries
Initial Response Deadline: 27 June 2022
Wellcome’s Discovery Research team aims to design new funding activities to reduce barriers that are slowing down and/or blocking progress in the field of Bioimaging. Wellcome has a history of supporting innovation in bioimaging and our current portfolio of investments has supported work that ranges from new tools and technologies to infrastructure and data repositories. We want to progress our work even further and identify new key areas where Wellcome investments in bioimaging methodologies, equipment, tools and technology development (across the scales of life, from atoms to humans) will afford field-opening, filed-shaping and field-advancing opportunities.
The purpose of the RFP is to commission a delivery partner to provide critical insights on the following fundamental questions:
- What are the nascent technologies/methodologies in the field of bioimaging that will enable researchers to formulate new hypotheses and address new fundamental questions for life, health, and wellbeing?
- What are specific barriers (in terms of technology, methodology, hardware, software, and access) that are limiting progress in the field of bioimaging in both High-Income Countries (HICs) and Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)?
- Who are the key leaders on an international level that are driving development in the field of bioimaging?
Wellcome is intending for this piece of work to equally cover both, the UK/HIC and LMIC landscape, addressing the different needs in both settings.
Eligibility: Open to all countries
Response deadlines:
Expressions of Interest – 20 May 2022
Full proposals – 6 June 2022
We’re looking to appoint a bold and creative agency/consultant to determine how we can best use photography to advance our brand and strategy. As well as reviewing the effectiveness of Wellcome Photography Prize as a vehicle for our brand, we need to better understand how our audiences respond to photography and how to ensure the imagery we use reflects our commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Eligibility: Open to all countries
Initial response deadline: Closed
We’re looking to commission a team to identify and evaluate the properties, strengths, and weaknesses of selected measures for depression, anxiety and psychosis and to produce a toolkit for their use by researchers, funders and journals. The team will also produce an implementation plan to encourage the uptake of common metrics by key stakeholder groups.
Eligibility: Open to all countries
Initial response deadline: 5 May 2022
Download the full RFP [PDF 573KB]
Watch a recording of our webinar from 11 April 2022 to find out more.