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.
Explore our requests for proposals (RFP) below.
Climate and Health RFPs
There are currently no RFPs for Climate and Health
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
Wellcome is undertaking a series of activities to explore further opportunities for neuroscience-related investments relevant for the Wellcome Mental Health Strategy. The specific focus of this project is to identify how computational models are being designed in the neuroscience and psychiatric fields, considering how bias mitigation approaches are leveraged across their life cycle.
Submission of questions: 14 August 2023
Submission of full proposals: 4 September 2023
Ahead of a funding call in digital mental health technologies, planned to launch mid-2024, Wellcome is undertaking a series of scoping activities to better understand the landscape and shape this funding call.
- Analyse the informativeness of clinical trials in digital mental health and identify common elements that lead to uninformative trials.
- Produce a report on the digital mental health innovator landscape in low-and middle-income countries.
- Review the experiential literature on the perspectives and priorities of people with lived experience regarding digital mental health innovations and review the involvement of lived experience experts in the design and development of digital innovations.
- Analyse the digital health research landscape to help us understand how different kinds of research models might promote and create ‘catalytic environments’ that can accelerate and unlock progress in digital mental health research.
Expand to learn more about each contract opportunity:
To drive a step change in early intervention for anxiety, depression, and psychosis, Wellcome plans to fund the development of new and improved digital interventions and diagnostic tools. A key methodology for assessing whether and how these interventions and tools work is through conducting clinical trials. To ensure that its funding is as impactful as possible, Wellcome aims to understand what are the common issues in digital mental health that lead to uninformative clinical trials.
Wellcome is commissioning this piece of research to:
- build a framework for digital mental health trial informativeness
- identify the common elements of uninformative clinical trials in digital mental health
- analyse current best practice guidelines to identify gaps between what is recommended and what is important for trial informativeness
- make recommendations for how trial informativeness can be evaluated and monitored
Eligibility: Open to all
Expression of interest deadline: 10 July 2023
Full proposal deadline: 4 September 2023
We are looking to engage up to two Expert Advisors to produce a report for Wellcome focused on the landscape of institutions, researchers, companies, and developers based in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) whose work is in the area of digital mental health. This can be completed by either one or two Expert Advisors over a period of up to five months, including no more than 90 full working days in total.
Eligibility: Open to all. We are looking for individuals who have relevant expertise in digital mental health and research conducted in LMICs, and are particularly interested in receiving expressions of interest from those based in LMICs.
Expressions of interest deadline: Friday 14 July 2023
We are looking to engage one or two Expert Advisors to conduct a review of the qualitative literature and produce a report for Wellcome on:
- the perspectives and priorities of people with lived experience of mental health challenges on digital mental health innovations
- the involvement of lived experience experts in the design and development of digital innovations.
Eligibility: Open to all. We are looking for individuals who have relevant expertise in lived experience collaboration and digital mental health interventions
Expressions of interest deadline: Friday 14 July 2023
At Wellcome we want to understand how different kinds of research models might promote and create ‘catalytic environments’ that can accelerate and unlock progress in digital mental health research.
We define catalytic environments as research collaborations that are focused on a specific research challenge, and where funding is provided to cover both the research and the necessary core-structure to coordinate research teams to use their expertise, knowledge, and skills to advance ideas through the translation pathway to help achieve their mission.
Wellcome is commissioning this piece of research to:
- An overview of existing catalytic environments for digital health research
- Suggestions as to what mix of skills and attributes would drive forward progress in a catalytic environment for digital mental health
- Recommendations to Wellcome on what kind if catalytic environments would deliver value in achieving our strategic goals.
Eligibility: Open to all
Expression of interest deadline: 21 July 2023
Full proposal deadline: 1 September 2023
Other RFPs
Translation and Portfolio Integration:
There are currently no RFPs for Translation and Portfolio Integration
Strategy:
There are currently no RFPs for Strategy
Corporate Affairs:
Wellcome’s Insight Team within Corporate Affairs is looking for a supplier to deliver a workshop or series of workshop sessions to Wellcome’s internal staff working on influencing and engagement programmes within our Climate and Health area.
The aim is to enable influencing and engagement teams to understand and effectively use audience insights to inform their strategic influencing and engagement work.
This influencing and engagement work can include communications, campaigns, policy work, partnerships and engagement, among others.
The workshop or series of workshops is expected to use strong cases of existing Climate and Health audience insights to deliver a practical, hands-on and engaging session or series of sessions for an internal audience working on a portfolio of Climate and Health influencing and engagement activities.
Eligibility: The supplier of this RFP would need to have:
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experience in audience insight, strategic communications or related areas
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experience in the fields of climate change, health and/or climate and health audience insight (or onboard relevant experts to inform the design and delivery of the workshop or series of workshops).
Submission of questions by: 10 August 2023
Submission of full proposals: 14 August 2023
Wellcome's Public Engagement and Campaign team is looking to build a campaign that is co-created with communities most affected by infectious disease, centring their perspectives in the development of the campaign approach.
Eligibility: The supplier of this RFP would need to have:
- an understanding of the methods, tools, principles and processes of co-creation
- experience co-creating projects or campaigns with lower resource communities disproportionately affected by infectious disease, or with other marginalised communities in low- and middle- income countries
- the ability to leverage networks in the countries required, either with an existing base there or through partnerships.
Expressions of interest and questions submission (selection stage): 19 July 2023
Wellcome notifies successful suppliers to submit a full proposal: 28 July 2023
Submission of full proposals: 18 August 2023
Wellcome’s Communications team is working to optimise our corporate website, wellcome.org, for core audiences. We are seeking an SEO agency partner to provide:
- A technical SEO audit of wellcome.org
- An on-page SEO audit of key pages, to include:
- recommendations of updates to on-page content to better optimise headings and copy
- recommendations of refreshed meta titles, descriptions, and URLs.
- SEO training to our in-house content and communications teams.
Return the request for quotation to Lucie Vincer, Product Manager at l.vincer@wellcome.org by 11 September 2023.
Culture, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (CEDI):
There are currently no RFPs for CEDI
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.
We do not contract with suppliers connected to the tobacco industry. For clarity, we define the tobacco industry as any company, entity or organisation (or groups or combinations of the same) whose business other than for an insignificant part (less than 10% of its revenue), is the development, production, promotion, marketing, or sale of tobacco in any country of the world. The term also includes any companies that are a subsidiary or a holding company or affiliate of the above. This also includes E-cigarette companies and non-tobacco related companies which are fully or partially owned by the tobacco industry.
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 UK government financial sanctions list.
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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.