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A Request for Proposal (RFP) is an excellent way for nonprofits to find the best products and services at competitive prices. Although it often requires considerable time and effort, a well-planned, well-written RFP can be a game-changer. Done right, the RFP process can help you find a partner that truly understands your goals, pain points, and needs.
To make sure your RFP process is properly executed, you'll want to ask a few questions before you get started:
Start by figuring out what you're trying to achieve. Do you have an existing solution that's causing you issues? Are there inefficiencies in your reporting process that are costing you a ton of time?
You'll want to identify your key stakeholders at this stage. They're going to be an important part of the process for mapping out needs, choosing a solution, and ultimately driving your RFP process forward. Whoever's leading the initiatives should ideally be someone close to the problem or challenges.
From there, write a summary of where your organization is right now versus where you want it to be. Figure out what needs to be changed, how you can change it, and how that'll impact your organization as a whole. Lastly, determine how you'll measure your ROI — how will you know if the solution has done what you needed it to do?
You've already defined the goal of your RFP. You'll also need to be capable of articulating how fulfilling that goal aligns with your organization's overarching mission. Think about both short-term operational goals and long-term strategic objectives.
For example, many nonprofits are using very outdated solutions. So with that in mind, maybe your goal is to get something more modern. Older solutions tend to be mostly manual, and require a pretty significant time investment.
That's not such a big deal for smaller nonprofits, but as your organization scales, it's going to get harder and harder to do things by hand.
You can't really hire more people to solve the problem, either. That's not only expensive, but it's a band-aid fix for inefficient workflows. Not only that, the hiring process tends to be a big pain for nonprofits — again, largely because of manual work.
Legacy solutions also tend to be mostly on-premises, and not really well-suited for remote staff.
A newer solution would allow your nonprofit to shift from manual, paper-based work to intelligent automation and digital workflows. This not only reduces manual work but also has the potential to improve accuracy, reporting, and analytics.
Start by identifying your must-haves. These are the features and fixes you absolutely can't live without — and if a vendor doesn't offer them, that's a deal-breaker. Define your priorities so that they're actionable and executable, then list each key requirement by priority
Once you've identified your fixed requirements, you can start thinking about value adds. Remember that more isn't always better here. Vague asks such as "program management functionality" probably aren't going to be very helpful when connecting with prospective service providers.
Features and functionality aside, you'll also want to consider a few other things, too:
Next, you'll want to think about integration. List the systems you need to integrate with your new solution. For each system, define why integration is necessary, what data you need to pull, and whether the integration needs to pull a file that's processed by another system.
There's also the question of what type of integrations you'll need. Will an API work, or do you need direct integration? Your budget's also going to come into play here — ideally, you'll want to look for a vendor that can help you integrate without costing too much.
Speaking of budget, let's talk about that next.
Right now, you've probably got a pretty good idea of what your technology budget looks like. You'll want to work with that to determine the required budget for your RFP. You can gather information from the following sources:
You need to find the right data to make an informed decision, including the current market pricing for the type of solution you want to deploy. Make sure your budget includes both implementation and ongoing costs.
Your goal here is to answer one question: Will the budget for which you're currently approved cover your requirements? If not, you're going to need to either secure more funding or rework those requirements.
People always schedule for the Q&A, proposal submissions, and date of award — but these aren't the only key dates leading up to deployment. That's why it's important to establish a desired timeline at the outset. Make sure to keep it flexible so you've got some wiggle room if you encounter any mitigating circumstances.
When creating this timeline, consider the following:
Since a lot of this stuff is probably outside your wheelhouse, we suggest asking an expert how long these things should take. Have them provide a basic timeline you can compare against your own, but be realistic about what's possible.
What internal capabilities do you have, and how can you apply those to getting your new solution up and running?
Remember that your day-to-day will continue during implementation. Be realistic about each team's capabilities and how much time they'll have, as they'll need to be able to keep doing their day job while keeping your timelines intact.
There's also a chance that you might not have the necessary internal resources for implementation — lack of resources is, after all, the number one reason we see implementations stall out.
Start by selecting a suitable project manager, then identify a few subject matter experts to lead the charge. We'd also suggest having champions in place to support the various stages of deployment. These are people who know the product well enough to train their colleagues and who are passionate enough about the product to drum up hype and get people excited about the change.
To that end, we take a "train the trainer" approach, nominating a few experts to ensure internal teams understand the solution.
And you will need to get people excited. Change can be scary. Break down barriers by keeping your messaging positive, light, and focused on how the engagement will improve everyone's workdays.
Generative AI is here to stay. And while the technology's definitely received its fair share of bad publicity in recent months, it's also one of the most promising technologies released in decades, with the potential to revolutionize the way your business operates. So while you may not have any specific needs for AI right now, it's still a good idea to think about how you might approach it in the future.
And it's also a good idea to ask prospective vendors what their plans are for AI so that you know how well they're looking to the future.
While you'll still need to include some technical terminology, you'll still want to avoid superfluous and redundant language wherever possible. You should be able to outline all your requirements within 2-10 pages, excluding appendices such as requirements lists. More complex projects will naturally require longer and more in-depth proposals.
When reviewing your RFP, make sure you've included the following:
Ultimately, if your RFP is subpar, you'll get subpar proposals. Following the advice we've provided in this piece ensures that it won't be. Instead, you'll receive proposals that let you know exactly which vendors are going to be the right choice.
Wondering how Enterprise Resource Planning software can help streamline your RFP process? Reach out and we'll show you.