RFP Technicalities
When I joined the RFP group of the Inspire Up Foundation I was excited but worried. I thought we had to create a completely original RFP for potential grantees. However, our group quickly agreed upon the idea of pulling sections from the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers (WRAG) application. We had all worked with the WRAG in our nonprofit management class when we wrote grant proposals for various organizations around Washington, DC, so we were familiar with the questions and the format.
The group decided that we wouldn’t use the entire WRAG but we would take components of it that we deemed were necessary for understanding the projects for the grant proposals we received. We didn’t want to create too much extra work for the potential grantees and eliminated extraneous information that wouldn’t be helpful when we later evaluated the applications. Our group meshed really well and worked productively in the short time period we had to create what we thought was a strong RFP.
In class that Wednesday we presented the rough draft of our RFP to the rest of the class. For the most part the class agreed with what we had decided was necessary information. Most of the feedback and edits we received were combining some of the questions to make it even easier and less tedious for the applicants. However, there was one component of the RFP we couldn’t agree upon as a class. The debate was over the allotted length and whether the application should be double or single spaced.
From this debate came two sides of the argument. Those in favor of single spaced said it looked more professional and formal. Those in favor of double spaced said it would be easier come time for evaluation. I brought up the point that the WRAG asks that proposals are double spaced. While professionalism is important, double versus single spacing will not alter how professional our foundation seems to the applicants. The points made for both single and double spacing were extremely valid. However, this debate ended up taking almost an hour and a half of our class time. We wasted most of our energy on a technicality rather than the content of the RFP. In hindsight, while formatting is important, we should have focused less on formatting technicalities and more on what we were asking applicants to provide.
