WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT PROPOSAL

The following is a sample of a website development proposal intended to serve only as a

guide for drafting such a proposal for your own organization. You should edit it as
appropriate to reflect information about your organization and the specific website project to
be funded with the requested grant.

Project Background
Under the leadership of a new president and CEO, [NONPROFIT NAME] began a process of institutional
analysis with the goal of streamlining internal operations and better integrating the services we offer
Minneapolis educators, students, and community members. In response to that analysis, we are
implementing significant changes to our operations: including reassigning personnel to ensure better
cross-program collaboration. As we evaluated how we must transform our services to best meet the
needs of a changing economy and a new generation of students, it became increasingly clear that our
role as the bridge between SCHOOL DISTRICT A and the Twin Cities community demanded a significant
online presence.
The new website will serve three crucial purposed for our organization:
1. Save money and increase efficiency through better design and open-sourced Drupal
coding language
2. Provide useful services tailored to each of our student programs, for instance: hosting
downloadable applications for summer internships
3. Become a powerful platform for one of our core missions: increasing community
engagement with the Minneapolis Public Schools

Project Overview
1. Increasing Organizational Efficiency
Our current website was created in 2008 and fails to effectively convey the structure of our organization
or provide useful services, such as document-hosting, for any of our programs. Because it was written in
an outdated and proprietary coding language, we cannot make even simplest modification or updates
without contacting the web designer who originally built the site. Even actions as simple as adding a link
for an upcoming event or uploading a current picture file are at best a time-consuming headache for our
Director of Communications, and, at worst, simply not possible.
After a rigorous selection process, we contracted with VENDOR A-Z because of their commitment to an
information architecture process: a series of meetings with a six-member EXAMPLE NONPROFIT web
team composed of representatives from all our programs as well as our leadership. VENDOR A-Z
representatives met with our web team multiple times and led it through a structured process of
analysis that led to a verbal and graphic representation of operations, our audience, and our needs. Our
new site will intuitively reflect these conversations, meaning program directors and associates will not
only have resources into the site from day one, but they will all have the capability to modify it
conveniently as needed in the future.
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Example: Because our current website lacks the capability to host documents for downloading, our
Grants Coordinator had to pay an outside website to host 10 digital grant applications and documents
needed by over 100 school fund administrators. Our new site will allow EXAMPLE NONPROFIT staff to
post documents quickly and easily, and outside users to find them and download in seconds.
2. Program Services
The new website will be a single platform offering access to our diverse services. We are transforming
our organization to break down silos between programs, but we currently lack the capability to offer
students, volunteers, donors, and potential partners an integrated menu of up-to-date opportunities
across the entire organization. Convenient online access to our full spectrum of services, not only during
recruitment but throughout a stakeholder engagement with EXAMPLE NONPROFIT, will ensure that
everyone is more familiar with our organization as a whole and make it easier for internal and external
users to navigate between programs.
The new website will be a valuable tool for delivering program services such as:

Students and employers participating in our programs will be able to download applications and
other forms, view calendars, access FAQs, and contact their job coaches and liaisons
Individuals and organizations seeking to volunteer with or donate to EXAMPLE NONPROFIT can
access a database of schools with matching needs
Program coordinators can publicize upcoming events and post information on resources,
deadlines, and other important college and financial aid information
Community Engagement staff can post information on community events, and work with our
communications director to translate our online contacts into concrete engagement with students
Members of our new Alumni Network will be able to use the site as an online hub

Example: Every spring, over 3,000 students apply to our summer internship program. Last year more
than 1,000 low-income youth completed our work readiness program, and over 700 were placed in our
youth summer internships. At every stage of this process, documents and information from
applications to resume writing tips must be distributed. Due to the limitations of our current site, this
process occurs off-line. Our new website will allow students and parents to access vital application
documents from home and it will have space for resources on interview skills, resume templates, office
etiquette, and financial literacy. For many low-income youth, our summer youth internship is not only
their first exposure to the world of work, but to the world of banking. Links to a website like hands on
banking could be a valuable addition to our resource page.
3. Engaging the Community
The new site will be a powerful tool to facilitate greater engagement between community members and
the public education system. Our goal is to build a vibrant and diverse online community by meeting the
specific needs of key audiences:

potential and current volunteers

corporate, foundation, and individual donors
students, alumni, parents, and staff
employers and other community partners
Minneapolis youth age 16 21 seeking employment opportunities
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journalists and policymakers

potential and current business partners
members of the general public concerned with quality public education

The front page of the site will house an updated calendar of education events and volunteer
opportunities. It will spotlight a different student and EXAMPLE NONPROFIT partner organization each
week, and it will also house a scrolling newsfeed that will contain photos and stories of EXAMPLE
NONPROFIT and SCHOOL DISTRICT A activities, national education news, and posts from our new blog,
which will launch with the site. We expect our website to become the first place Minneapolis residents
go when they want to learn about:

An independent perspective on the Minneapolis Public Schools

Student achievement data
school events and deadlines
career training and work opportunities
college access and financial aid
volunteering with students
donating to the district or to individual schools and programs
connecting with other SCHOOL DISTRICT A alumni
learning about the latest education trends and initiatives
organizing education advocacy groups and campaigns

We are already using Facebook and Twitter to build a community of people who recognize their stake in
their citys schools; our website will become a hub for that community and a tool for channeling virtual
enthusiasm into concrete pathways of support for SCHOOL DISTRICT A students.

Partner Selection & Project Implementation

With the above benefits in mind, our leadership decided to commit a significant amount of operating
resources to a new website. Our web design partner VENDOR A-Z generously offered to contribute $X
in-kind donations to ensure our site has the intuitive feel and technical functionality we need. But we
estimate it will cost $X to complete the project. Unless we find a funder, this money will come from our
operating budget.
Before settling in VENDOR A-Z, we researched or interviewed the following firms:
Vender A: website, proposal strength & weakness, bid, reason for decline
Vender B: website, proposal strength & weakness, bid, reason for decline
Vender C: website, proposal strength & weakness, bid, reason for decline
Vender D: website, proposal strength & weakness, bid, reason for decline
VENDOR A-Z: (website). VENDOR A-Z has a strong track record with local and national nonprofit clients,
and a very engaging information architecture process that helps organizations clarify their audience and
hone their messaging and communications goals. The firm also uses the open source software Drupal,
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which is much more affordable and will allow us to work with various Drupal software vendors and
consultants after the site was built. We determined that VENDOR A-Z best met our needs in terms of
price, expertise, process, quality product, and ongoing support.
A key selling point for VENDOR A-Z was the information architecture process described earlier in this
summary. After several in-depth meetings with our six-member web team, VENDOR A-Z presented a
series of documents with progressively greater detail: including a content outline, creative brief, wire
frames, and site map. They presented each proposal in person to the web team and continuously
modified the design in response to our feedback. We have attached several documents that resulted
from this process.

Measurement

EXAMPLE NONPROFIT list of community contacts will grow by at least 500 people each of the next
three years
We will build an alumni network of 100 people, with representatives from all 7 high schools in FY12
and increase participation by 10% each of the next two years
We will increase professional partners by 5% annually, and secure 50 volunteer coaches each for
students and parents in FY12, increasing this number by 25% in FY13 and again in FY14

Additional Attachments

Timeline

Budget

Fundraising

Customer centric proposal from VENDOR A-Z to EXAMPLE NONPROFIT