Request For Proposal - Website Redesign
Proposal must
be submitted to:
Taif Jany
Program Associate
Education for Peace in Iraq Center
900 2nd Street NW, Suite 216
Washington, D.C. 20002
taif@epic-usa.org
I. About EPIC
Founded in 1998 by U.S. veterans and
humanitarian advocates, EPIC is an independent, impartial 501(c)3 charitable
organization that seeks to promote peace and empower young people in Iraq and
Iraqi Kurdistan.
EPIC is a dynamic, mission driven organization
with an office of two full-time staff based in Washington, DC. We run projects
"on the ground" in Iraq to empower the youth of Iraq and assist
vulnerable populations, especially those affected by war. EPIC is also engaged
in research and humanitarian advocacy in Washington, and works to encourage the
U.S. government to invest in a long-term strategy for peace and development in
Iraq and the region.
Our projects include Soccer Salam, an emergency
response campaign to deliver humanitarian assistance and soccer balls to
displaced Iraqi children and their families; TentEd, a rapid impact project
designed to support the educational needs of refugee and displaced children in
Iraq; and the Iraq and Security Humanitarian Monitor (ISHM), a weekly report
that uses Arabic and Kurdish news sources and aid agency reports to track
security and political developments in Iraq through a humanitarian lens.
II. Statement of Intent
This Request for Proposals (RFP) seeks
submissions of proposals from all interested proposers to provide:
a. Primarily: web design, development and
content migration
b. Secondarily: maintenance and minimal support
services
c. Optional: website hosting.
III. Project Objectives
The main objectives of the new site is to
generate more donations, help visitors better understand and engage with EPIC's
mission, and build and excite a community of supporters.
Strategic Objectives:
a. Optimize website to generate more donations
b. Help visitors easily understand EPIC's
mission and learn about our work
c. Build a community of supporters by delivering
EPIC-generated content concisely and clearly. This content includes a blog,
podcast, and other ongoing projects. See notes below on "audience" in
Section VII.
Other Objectives:
d. Increase traffic
e. Increase visitor engagement through architecture,
design, and other features such as social media integration
f. Keep site up and working with quick and easy
fixes, and easy to update with fresh content
g. Complete a seamless integration with EPIC's
new CRM system for tracking donations, donors & other supporters.
IV. Schedule
Milestones Target Dates
RFP Release Date June 24, 2015
Deadline for Questions July 10, 2015 (5:00pm
EST)
Deadline for Proposal Submission July 15, 2015
(5:00pm EST)
Proposal Award Date July 27, 2015
Contract Completion & Project Kickoff August
03, 2015
Launch Date September 30, 2015
V. Budget and Scope
As EPIC is a small organization, we operate on a
limited budget for this project. The total budget allocated for this project is
a range from $4,000 to $7,000. Cost will be a major factor in vendor selection,
and ability to come in at the low end of our range will be an advantage to any
bidder.
However, we have allocated a range because we
are, in fact, truly willing to consider proposals at the high end of our range
if they are significantly stronger than others.
We are willing to consider proposals below our
range, but do not anticipate that the project can be executed well below that
number. We are not willing to consider any proposal with a total cost above the
high end of our range.
The scope of the project that this budget covers
is outlined in bullet (a) in Section II: Statement of Intent. That is, web
design, development, and content migration. Costs for all of these services
must remain within our allotted budget. Any optional services for ongoing costs
(i.e. for hosting or maintenance) can be considered separately from our budget.
VI. EPIC's current website
Current Challenges:
• Donating experience not very user friendly
• Website looks and feels old
• Difficult Salsalabs backend
• Text-heavy pages
Current Assets:
• Impactful projects
• Powerful photography and ability to generate
more photos from Iraq
• Close connections with Iraq-based
organizations, civil society leaders, and young people
• Long track-record of focused Iraq advocacy and
projects
• Increasing visibility through new projects
• Active volunteers and partners
Current Technology Stack:
Wordpress, Salsalabs, and Google Analytics
Our current website is built through WordPress
and hosted by WP Engine. We are looking to move away from our website's current
design because it is not generating enough donations, and not retaining
visitors' attention.
Our "Donate" and "Join"
pages are both handled by Salsalabs, which tends not to provide the easiest and
most convenient user experience. EPIC is in the process of considering
migration to a new CRM system for managing & tracking donor & donation
data. This would completely replace Salsalabs. We are open to suggestions and
recommendations on CRM systems.
Our website metrics are measured by Google
Analytics through which we track who visits our site, session durations,
interaction with our social media platforms, etc.
VII. End-State Vision
We are open to a wide range of end-state visions
as long as they will accomplish the objectives outlined in section III.
Additionally, we do have a few "necessary principles" for the design
& organization of the site. We also have a small number of functional
requirements. Successful proposals will conform to these principals and
functional requirements.
Necessary Principles
a. Clean, clear, easy, & satisfying donor
experience
b. Less text, more images & multimedia
c. Simple & clear navigation
d. A clean, visually compelling home page that
quickly conveys to the user what EPIC's mission is, and what EPIC does.
Functional Requirements:
a. Site must work seamlessly with secure donate
pages that can communicate directly with EPIC's CRM system (must feed basic
donation & donor data).
b. Site must be able to handle multimedia
(video) with high performance.
c. Must be able to easily track a wide range of
web metrics. We currently do this through Google Analytics.
d. Easy for our current 2-person team to
maintain without requiring significant investment of time.
Beyond these principles and requirements,
however, we are open to any proposals. We have listed some additional
functionality & services that are not required, but in which we have a
particular interest.
Additional Functionality & Services of
Interest:
a. Continue using WordPress or switching to a
new platform if preferred by developers and it meets our requirements
b. New donation processing gateway (i.e.,
replace Salsalabs)
c. New tools to improve our website's
interaction with social media
d. EPIC is contemplating replacing Salsalabs for
CRM (donor tracking) needs. We are interested in doing content migration as
part of this project. The scope of this content migration will be minor: basic
donor & donation data is all that is included.
Target Audiences:
EPIC has a range of important target audiences.
We will work very closely with the vendor from the outset of the project's
design phase to map audiences to content so that the site's design flows from
our intended outreach. As a general guideline for responses, however, our
primary target audiences are:
a. Globally-engaged young people (e.g. college
students)
b. Humanitarians
c. U.S. veterans, service members, and military
families
d. Faith communities and faith-based philanthropic
organizations
e. The Iraqi Diaspora and Iraqi youth and civil
society leaders in Iraq
f. Journalists, researchers, foreign service
officers, security contractors, and others engaged on Iraq
VIII. Evaluation Criteria
a. Cost of Proposal: EPIC is a small non-profit,
so cost will be a primary consideration.
b. Proposed approach, including clarity of
understanding of the scope of services to be provided and appropriateness of
the solution/services to accomplishing the objectives mentioned in section III
c. Conformity to the Necessary Principles and
Functional Requirements listed above
d. Beauty & user-centricity of design
proposals
e. Capability, capacity and professional
experience
f. Knowledge and experience in non-profit arena
g. History of successfully managing other
contracts with public or private agencies
h. Ability to meet required timelines or other
deadlines
i. References
IX. Proposal Submission Instructions
Questions regarding the RFP are due by July 10,
2015. Please direct these questions to EPIC's Program Associate, Taif Jany, at taif@epic-usa.org.
All proposals must be submitted by email as pdf
attachments no later than July 15, 2015. Proposals must be emailed to taif@epic-usa.org. Please begin the subject
line of this email in all capital letters with the words: "EPIC WEB
PROPOSAL:", followed by whatever text you would like.
Required Proposal Elements: In order to be
considered, all proposals must provide EPIC with the following content, if
available:
a. Please submit proposal with an outline of
cost and a plan for meeting the timeline outlined above. Project cost shall
exclude cost of hosting, ongoing maintenance, third-party tools and services,
etc. Please include pricing for such in a separate line item
b. Company Name, address, and website
c. An executive summary: Why are you the best
candidate for this project?
d. Contact person full name, email, and phone
number
e. Name(s), role(s), bio(s) (if available) of
key member(s) of the build team, along with CV/Resumes.
f. Examples of recent websites in portfolio
g. References (clients we have permission to
call)
i. Company or organization's name
ii. Services provided with a link to this work,
if public access is available
iii. Year of project completion
iv. Name of contact person
v. Phone of contact person
h. Demonstrate capabilities to:
i. Create a website that can integrate with CRM
in order to pass donor & donation data to CRM system.
Optional Proposal Elements:
a. We welcome an informal letter of intent to
bid including your company's name, contact person name, phone number and email
address upon initial review of this RFP
b. Examples of non-profit websites in portfolio,
if any (not required)
c. Using Styletiles (www.styletile.es) or mockup page for the new
design of our website and/or homepage, optional.
Once the project is awarded, vendor will be
expected to conclude a contract and Statement of Work with EPIC.
Thank you for your interest. We look forward to
hearing from you.
