Starting a new website project can feel overwhelming. Finding the right agency — one that truly understands your needs and can deliver effectively — is crucial. The best way to set yourself up for success? Ask the right questions from the start. But equally as important is providing as much clarity as possible in your Request for Proposal (RFP), ensuring that the responding agencies can offer accurate estimates and informed responses.
For large organizations with multiple decision-makers (we’re looking at you higher education and healthcare!) this process can be even more complex. Procurement requirements, departmental priorities, and differing opinions can make alignment challenging.
We see a lot of RFPs … ones that are 100 pages long and full of legal and procurement boilerplate, to those that are just three to five pages (and in case you were wondering, we prefer the shorter, more concise ones that get to the heart of the problem). So we have thoughts on what makes a great RFP.
To simplify the process, we’ve created an RFP template to serve as a foundation for your next website project. Our friends at the Drupal Association have written an RFP template as well specifically around open source projects.
As you work through the template, here are a few essentials to keep in mind:
- Know your goals. Align with your internal teams in advance of the RFP process to define (and align) your needs.
- Think in terms of building a long-term relationship. A good partnership with your vendors is key and should be established from the beginning. Do you like them as people? Can you imagine being on hours of calls? Choose an agency you can imagine collaborating with for years.
- Be transparent. Clarity will benefit everyone. The clearer you are, the stronger and more customized the proposals you’ll get.
- State your budget. This is a big one. When you include a realistic budget range, agencies can tailor their recommendations and avoid over- or under-scoping. It saves everyone time, builds trust, and ensures proposals are grounded in what’s achievable. Also consider reserving some percentage for contingency.
- Don’t be overly prescriptive. Describe your challenges, not the exact solutions. Good agencies are gifted at coming up with expert solutions to challenges that are stated in terms of problem statements or business objectives. Keeping an open mind will allow you to see (and compare) your prospective vendor’s recommendations and benefit from their expertise.
- Give yourself and your vendor enough time. Start the RFP process before your need is immediate to avoid extra pressure on both sides to meet an unnecessarily tight timeline to respond. Allowing more time can also mean more considered and complete responses.
- Talk to your potential vendors ahead of time. This allows you to establish the relationship and pre-select the ones you suspect will be a good fit. The right vendors can provide a lot of value early in the process, which may even help inform the scope or direction of the RFP.
If you use AI to write your RFP:
AI tools can help you get started faster, but be careful: they tend to add unnecessary detail (and bloat equals a higher budget). To keep your RFP sharp:
- Begin with a clear problem statement and desired outcomes.
- Ask AI to outline sections, not write a full document.
- Review, refine, and delete anything that doesn’t add value.
- Separate “must-haves” from “nice-to-haves.”
- Always have a human proofread any AI parts of your RFP to sanity-check the output against your goals and budget.
What’s next?
Once you’ve written that RFP and gotten responses back, it’s time to choose your vendor! We’ve also got advice on how to evaluate the RFP responses you receive.
Kanopi’s Allison Manley gave a presentation at the NTC Conference on how to write a winning RFP. Check out her presentation below to get more in-depth information.
