In case your nonprofit has ever tried to revamp its web site, purchase a grant, or put together for an audit, there are some roles for which your crew merely isn’t ready. It’s unusual for nonprofit organizations to have a complete skillset in-house.
For that reason, nonprofits usually search experience from exterior consultants and distributors. Whether or not you presently have a deal with in your mission-critical duties or have to outsource instantly, making a request for proposals (RFP) units the stage for locating the proper abilities on the proper worth.
An RFP is a proper doc that outlines your group’s wants, expectations, finances, and choice standards when hiring distributors or consultants for a process. Let’s evaluation the perfect practices your nonprofit ought to implement to jot down an excellent RFP.
1. Outline Your Objectives
A well-defined aim is a important basis to your RFP, guiding your nonprofit’s questions and qualification standards. It’s essential to clearly articulate this aim to draw the proper distributors and keep away from unreliable responses, particularly for mission-critical duties. For instance, an RFP for nonprofit compliance specialists should recruit certified professionals to make sure your group stays in good standing and avoids extreme penalties, like 501(c)(3) standing revocation.
By defining your targets from the beginning, your group can guarantee proposals align with not simply your challenge but in addition your broader mission. Your aim ought to make clear the next:
- Your nonprofit’s drawback or want
- The end result your group hopes to attain
- The scope of the work
- Your finances vary
- The anticipated timeline for completion of the challenge
To place this into context, let’s say your nonprofit seeks skilled bookkeeping providers. You want knowledgeable steerage on monetary administration to attain correct and compliant monetary data, enhance monetary reporting, and tighten your finances.
To perform this, you need to search for a bookkeeper who will file all monetary transactions in your fund accounting system, put together month-to-month monetary reviews, and information budgetary choices. You’ve got $10,000 to spend on their providers and need the bookkeeper to begin instantly, however the engagement will proceed on an ongoing foundation. This degree of specificity will assist your nonprofit entice essentially the most certified proposals.
2. Define Detailed Proposal Necessities
Together with attracting the eye of certified candidates, your RFP ought to make clear what is required from their bids. Present primary submission instructions, just like the format their response ought to take and the way they need to ship it to you. Additionally, record the required data respondents ought to embrace, equivalent to:
- Related expertise: Description of previous tasks, testimonials and references from former purchasers, and samples of earlier work
- Proposed method: Step-by-step plan outlining the instruments and methodologies they’ll use to satisfy your nonprofit’s wants
- Finances breakdown: Detailed pricing construction, together with any extra charges the seller may require
This data permits your nonprofit to successfully examine proposals and discover the perfect candidate. For instance, a nonprofit in search of a web site designer may obtain proposals from a number of candidates who can tackle the group’s wants throughout the required finances and time-frame. Nevertheless, extra data, just like the candidate’s portfolio and references, will help you discover the right match.
3. Be Clear About Choice Standards
When sorting by means of proposals, your crew should be on the identical web page about what constitutes a prime contender. Establishing clear standards forward of time ensures a good and goal choice course of, decreasing confusion and attainable biases from interfering. Offering these expectations within the RFP will help potential candidates self-assess whether it is price their time to submit a response.
There are two key sources you’ll have to successfully and persistently consider proposals:
- A listing of standards: Create an inventory of must-haves, equivalent to an expertise degree, a particular method, adherence to your finances, or another requirement that is sensible to your challenge.
- A scoring system: Develop a scoring rubric that assigns weight to the standards in your record. You may price every criterion on a scale of 1 to 5, with one indicating the seller doesn’t meet your expectations and 5 indicating they totally meet your expectations. The seller with the best rating is your finest candidate.
Additionally, present a transparent timeline to your decision-making course of in order that respondents know when to anticipate a response out of your group. This could embrace a submission deadline, analysis interval, and choice announcement date. With a clear schedule, respondents aren’t left ready to your choice, and your open communication will begin the brand new partnership off on the proper foot.
4. Maintain It Concise and Accessible
A nonprofit RFP should be concise and well-organized to draw related responses that meet your standards. Respondents could turn out to be confused or abandon their response altogether in case you present them with a prolonged and difficult-to-understand RFP.
Listed below are some normal suggestions for maintaining your RFP accessible:
- Restrict pointless jargon: Keep away from utilizing any purely inside jargon, abbreviations, or terminology, and search for respondents who also can talk with exact language freed from jargon.
- Use direct and simple language: Specificity is vital to attracting viable candidates. Be clear about what you’re in search of, whether or not or not it’s a monetary knowledgeable with a tried-and-true method to bookkeeping for nonprofits or a fundraising guide with recent concepts.
- Break up textual content the place attainable: Use headings, bullet factors, brief paragraphs, and different parts to make your RFP simply digestible. Whereas this doc gained’t be as glamorous as your affect reviews or weekly newsletters, it ought to nonetheless be straightforward for distributors to scan.
For those who’re not sure how your RFP may come throughout to somebody with much less context about your nonprofit’s wants, ask a employees member or volunteer to evaluation it and supply suggestions. For instance, ask your nonprofit’s bookkeeper to evaluation your RFP for a web site designer.
5. Assessment Actual Examples, Keep away from Templates
Whereas there are various free RFP templates on-line created only for nonprofits, your request will in the end depend upon your group’s distinctive targets, operations, and desires.
For instance, an RFP template may advocate together with your group’s background data and challenge targets. Nevertheless, a nonprofit in search of knowledgeable advertising company doubtless wants to incorporate extra particular standards, like examples of deliverables and a proposed method primarily based on the group’s branding.
Whereas nonprofits must be cautious of over-relying on RFP templates, reviewing examples can provide you an concept of what works and what doesn’t. In case your nonprofit doesn’t have previous RFPs of its personal to evaluation, take into account asking board members or companions for examples from their earlier work.
As your nonprofit grows, so will its want for outsourced experience. Over time, you’ll have many alternatives to craft an excellent RFP and optimize your method to yield the perfect outcomes. As responses roll in, analyze your method to establish elements which will have influenced the proposals and alter your RFP subsequent time as wanted.
