USDA · Food for Peace Transition · RFQ 12314426Q0118

USDA insider depth.
Small-business price point.

House Strategies Group — operationalizing the FY25 NOFO's core function commitment to support American Farmers feeding the world's hungriest and its three reform priorities (100% U.S. origin commodities · strict accountability against fraud/waste/abuse/diversion · off-boarding and graduating projects) through 11 deliverables across a 12-month firm-fixed-price period of performance under a Total Small Business Set-Aside. Anchored by Diana L. Caley (Senior M&E Advisor and Training Lead; author of the USAID FFP Emergency Indicator Handbook from which the NOFO's nine standard performance indicators descend; active U.S. Top Secret clearance), Maurice W. House (retired Minister Counselor; 38-year USDA Foreign Agricultural Service career), Kevin Latner (USDA Food for Progress commodity-monetization lead), Kevin Sage-EL (34-year USDA FAS Foreign Service; Agricultural Counselor U.S. Embassy Nairobi 2016-2020 covering Kenya + Rwanda among the FY25 NOFO priority countries; FAS Vessel Approval Analyst; FAS Branch Chief over $30M+/yr in U.S. cooperator matching-grant programs), Audrey McGuire (Emax CEO; bilateral co-investment deal architecture), and Olivia Till (HSG W-2 Senior Analyst & Designated Alternate POC under PWS §7.0; near-full-time continuous on-site coverage at USDA HQ DC).

Meet the FAS Bench PWS Coverage Map Eight Process Guides

38

Years inside USDA FAS · Maurice (retired Minister Counselor)

199

Indicators in the FFP Emergency Indicator Handbook Diana authored

$920M

Diana's FFP portfolio M&E oversight · DRC · Uganda · Bangladesh

TS

Diana's active U.S. Government clearance · above PWS-required T2

Three Pillars

Why House Strategies Group for this RFQ.

The PWS asks for a contractor who can bridge an experience gap USDA has not had to bridge before. HSG's bench is built for it.

Three Senior FAS Career Executives at the PWS Table

Maurice W. House — retired Minister Counselor (the senior career rank of the U.S. Foreign Service), 38 years inside USDA FAS, first P.L. 480 soybean program in Pakistan, $300M CCC GSM-102 oversight from Islamabad, first U.S. wheat export to Taliban-led Afghanistan. Kevin Latner — 25-year FAS career across Beijing, Chengdu, Tokyo, and Washington; USDA Food for Progress commodity-monetization market-assessment lead; current consulting on grant-to-business program transition. Kevin Sage-EL — 34-year FAS Senior Foreign Service career; Agricultural Counselor at U.S. Embassy Nairobi 2016-2020 covering Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, and Burundi (placing direct in-country FAS execution in two of the seven FY25 NOFO priority countries); FAS Vessel Approval Analyst for U.S. foreign food aid carriers (a direct Cargo Preference Act credential); FAS Branch Chief supervising $30M+/yr in U.S. cooperator matching-grant programs. No other small business in this competition fields three career FAS Senior Foreign Service officers with direct in-country execution covering two of the seven NOFO priority countries.

NOFO M&E Architecture from Its Original Author

Diana L. Caley — HSG's Senior M&E Advisor and Training Lead on this contract — authored the USAID Food for Peace Emergency Indicator Handbook (199 indicators), the predecessor framework from which the FY25 NOFO's nine standard performance indicators descend. She co-authored the BHA Monitoring and Evaluation Technical Guidance establishing institutional standards for monitoring, evaluation, compliance verification, and accountability across U.S. government emergency food assistance programming. Active U.S. Government Top Secret clearance — above the PWS-required T2 Public Trust. $920M FFP portfolio M&E oversight at the USAID Office of Food for Peace (DRC, Uganda, Bangladesh). Direct field experience in three of the seven FY25 NOFO priority countries — DRC, Kenya, Rwanda. HSG is not proposing a new M&E framework. HSG's Senior M&E Advisor wrote the framework USDA's NOFO already uses.

FFP 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0 Optioning Framework + AI-Augmented Delivery

HSG structures the transition choice for USDA leadership — Continuity (FFP 1.0), Adaptation (FFP 1.5, the May 13, 2026 NOFO baseline), or Redesign (FFP 2.0, the bilateral co-investment architecture Reform 3 points toward) — without substituting HSG judgment for USDA's. Three analytical objects work across all three trajectories: the Enhanced Bellmon Framework (three-tier extension to the statutory Bellmon screen), the four-stage graduation pathway (acute · sustained · recovery · graduation) operationalizing NOFO Reform 3, and the AI-augmented production discipline that compresses the eleven PWS deliverables into the twelve-month firm-fixed-price POP. Working preview at /transition-architecture.

Four NOFO-Anchored Design Goals

Every HSG deliverable serves one or more of these.

The first three are the FY25 NOFO's stated reform priorities. The fourth is the NOFO's core function commitment — the unifying purpose statement that frames every reform priority and every operational mechanism in the document.

Goal 1 · NOFO Reform 1

100% U.S. Origin Commodities

All food provided under the program is U.S.-grown and produced per the FY25 NOFO Eligible Commodities list (Appendix C). Cash transfers and food vouchers are foreclosed — a hard policy floor, not a preference. HSG's Prepositioned Commodities Guide (Deliverable 4) operationalizes the sourcing posture, anchored on Maurice House's CCC GSM-102 commodity-movement experience and Kevin Latner's Food for Progress monetization market-assessment methodology.

Goal 2 · NOFO Reform 2

Strict Accountability — Traceable to Every Dollar

The NOFO M&E architecture is the operational substrate of Reform 2: nine standard performance indicators, custom indicators measuring fraud/waste/abuse/diversion mitigation, semi-annual reporting cadence. Diana L. Caley — HSG's Senior M&E Advisor and Training Lead — authored the USAID FFP Emergency Indicator Handbook (199 indicators) from which the NOFO's nine descend, and co-authored the BHA M&E Technical Guidance that establishes the institutional accountability standard.

The nine NOFO standard indicators: (1) individuals in USG food security activities · (2) children U5 reached with nutrition-specific interventions · (3) children U2 reached with community nutrition · (4) pregnant women reached with nutrition-specific interventions · (5) quantity of food (MT) distributed · (6) Food Consumption Score · (7) Reduced Coping Strategies Index · (8) prevalence of moderate/severe food insecurity · (9) prevalence of acute malnutrition.

Goal 3 · NOFO Reform 3

Off-Boarding and Graduating Projects — No Forever Aid

NOFO Reform 3 commits USDA verbatim to "off-boarding and graduating projects, ensuring that Title II funding prioritizes emergency and in-need geographies rather than forever aid countries." HSG operationalizes this through the Four-Stage Graduation Pathway (acute · sustained · recovery · graduation) — the fifth named Enhanced Framework — calibrated against the FY25 NOFO seven priority countries and structured for FFP 2.0 bilateral co-investment trajectories. Diana co-leads with Maurice House.

Goal 4 · NOFO Core Function

Supporting American Farmers Feeding the World's Hungriest

The NOFO opens by committing USDA verbatim to "bring Food for Peace back to its core functions to support American Farmers feeding the world's hungriest." This is the unifying purpose statement of the document — the WHY behind Reforms 1, 2, and 3. Every HSG deliverable is designed to articulate, defend, and operationalize the U.S. farmer constituency's role in Title II programming.

The Communications Strategy Guide (Deliverable 3) leads with U.S. farmer / processor / exporter value-chain articulation. The Country Selection Guide (Deliverable 6) incorporates U.S. agricultural production alignment as a primary dimension. Kevin Latner's Cotton Council International and U.S. Grains Council leadership, Maurice House's CCC GSM-102 commodity-credit portfolio management, and Kevin Sage-EL's FAS Branch Chief tenure supervising $30M+/yr in U.S. cooperator matching-grant programs (Sunkist; California pistachio industry; Eastern pecan growers) and FAS Cotton Commodity Analyst work all anchor direct U.S. ag-producer engagement credentials at the bench level.

Eight Process Guides

The eight deliverables, one per PWS scope area

Each card maps to a PWS scope area, names the HSG senior lead, and previews the approach we'll bring on award.

Browse all 8
01Communications

Communications Strategy Guide

Food for Peace operates across foreign markets where U.S. visibility carries operational, diplomatic, and safety risk; across a U.S. domestic audience that needs to understand how the program connects to American farmers and ranchers under an America First framing; and across beneficiary communities who need to recognize the U.S. role consistently with host-country safety constraints. USDA inherits this triangulation problem without an established playbook.

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02Prepositioned Commodities

Prepositioned Commodities Guide

Prepositioned commodity strategy is a trade-off space — the cost of establishing and maintaining preposition stockpiles, the risk of holding shelf-stable commodities in volatile regions, the benefit of in-region response capacity when an unforeseen emergency strikes, and the supply-chain constraints around Cargo Preference compliance and U.S. domestic specialty-formulated commodity manufacturing capacity. USDA needs a single decision framework for that trade-off space.

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03Geography & Prioritization

Country Selection Guide

The FY25 Food for Peace Notice of Funding Opportunity (USDA FAS, published May 13, 2026) selected seven priority countries — Democratic Republic of the Congo, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya, and Rwanda — as the empirical baseline for the program's first USDA-administered award cycle. USDA does not need a methodology to pick countries de novo; USDA has picked them. USDA needs the analytical infrastructure to (a) defend the seven selections under Congressional and OIG scrutiny against the NOFO's three statutory eligibility triggers, (b) operationalize the four-stage graduation pathway that NOFO Reform 3 commits the program to, and (c) provide a defensible ongoing-vet methodology for adjusting the country list at future NOFO cycles.

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04Cross-Cutting

Stakeholder Relations Guide

FFP's stakeholder community spans the Food Aid Consultative Group (FACG, congressionally-mandated), the International Food Relief Partnership (IFRP), U.S. agricultural producer associations, Title II implementing PVOs, the World Food Programme (WFP), and host-country governments. USDA needs an engagement architecture rather than ad hoc outreach.

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05Non-Traditional Environments

Risk Management Guide

FFP operates in emergency, unstable, and otherwise non-traditional environments that USDA has not historically administered. Risk assessment, third-party monitoring, program evaluation, and implementing-partner personnel safety all require methodologies adapted to environments where standard pre-engagement diligence is unavailable.

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06Cross-Cutting

Programmatic Reporting Guide

FFP carries a portfolio of statutory and non-statutory reporting obligations including the Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR), congressional reporting touchpoints, and partner-facing reporting. USDA needs a reporting architecture that USDA can run.

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Explore the Portal

Eight sections. One quote package.

Team

Diana (Sr M&E Advisor + Training Lead) · Maurice · Kevin Latner · Kevin Sage-EL · Audrey · Jelani · Olivia

Transition Architecture

FFP 1.0 / 1.5 / 2.0 Optioning Framework + inheritance disposition

Sourcing & Cost

CCC/AMS commodity sourcing · the cargo-preference cost stack · fraud/waste vectors (GAO + OIG)

PWS Coverage

Every PWS section → named team lead (Diana lead/co-lead on every deliverable)

Methodology

Operating principles · AI/Expert Reconciliation Log · NOFO 3-reform anchor

Solutions Library

Eight FFP process-guide scenarios + Country Selection (NOFO 7)

Past Performance

Diana FFP Handbook + BHA M&E Guidance · APHIS · VA · Syngenta · Emax

Enhanced Frameworks

Bellmon · Country-Tier Risk · R&I Adaptation · 22 CFR Crosswalk · Four-Stage Graduation

For Evaluators

Compliance crosswalk · Amendment 1 Q&A clarifications · evaluation-factor map