Writing a Nonprofit Website RFP: What to Include

Nonprofit website procurement has a shape that commercial procurement does not. The budget is frequently grant-funded, which means a fixed amount, a defined period and a reporting obligation. The decision involves a board that meets monthly. And the site has to serve donors, program officers and beneficiaries at once, which makes "who is this for" a genuinely hard question rather than a formality.

This guide covers what to put in a nonprofit website RFP so the proposals you receive are comparable and the project survives contact with your funding calendar. The government-focused companion piece on writing a government website RFP covers the procurement mechanics in more depth; this one covers what changes for a 501(c)(3).

State the funding shape, not just the number

If the project is grant-funded, say so, and say when the grant period ends. Vendors need to know whether the constraint is the amount or the calendar, because those produce different plans. A fixed sum with an eighteen-month window can be phased; the same sum with a June deadline cannot.

Publishing a budget range is not weakness. Without one, you receive proposals spanning an order of magnitude, and most of your evaluation time goes into discovering that four of the six were never viable. A range lets vendors either bid to it honestly or decline, which saves everyone the effort.

Name your three audiences and rank them

Most nonprofit sites are built for donors and then quietly asked to serve everyone else. Say explicitly which audiences matter and in what order: first-time donors, recurring donors, program officers doing diligence, beneficiaries looking for a service, volunteers, board members, press.

The ranking drives real decisions. A site built primarily for beneficiaries in crisis looks nothing like one built primarily for major-gift diligence — the first optimises for plain language and speed on an old phone, the second for depth, financials and credibility. Both are legitimate. Choosing is the point.

Describe your donation stack as it actually is

Name the CRM, the payment processor and the email platform, and say which are staying. Donation infrastructure is where nonprofit projects generate their nastiest surprises: a vendor who assumes they are replacing your CRM prices a very different project from one integrating with the Raiser's Edge instance your development director will not give up, and rightly so.

Say whether recurring giving, tribute gifts, donor-advised funds, event registration or peer-to-peer fundraising are in scope. Each is a real piece of work, and each is routinely discovered after award.

Ask for accessibility, and mean it

Accessibility obligations reach nonprofit websites through public-accommodation law and, frequently, through funder conditions. But the practical argument is stronger than the legal one: an inaccessible site excludes the people you exist to serve, and a donation form that cannot be completed with a screen reader excludes donors who want to give you money.

Name WCAG 2.2 AA as the standard and ask how it will be verified — automated testing plus manual keyboard and screen-reader passes on the journeys that matter, which for you means the donation flow and the program pages. Score that answer. If you want to know where your current site stands before you even publish the RFP, an accessibility audit will tell you, and the findings are useful in the solicitation itself.

Say what happens to your existing URLs

Appeal pages, campaign landing pages, annual reports and program pages accumulate links from funders, press and partner organizations. A redesign that moves them silently is throwing away years of accumulated credibility along with the search visibility.

Make URL preservation an explicit requirement, with a redirect mapping delivered before launch. It is routine work when planned into the project and expensive when discovered afterwards.

Ask for grant-ready documentation to be findable

A program officer doing diligence should be able to find your annual report, your IRS filings, your board list and your impact data without emailing you. This is a structural requirement, not a content one, and it belongs in the RFP: name the documents that must be published and reachable within two clicks of the homepage.

It is also worth asking how those documents will be made accessible. A scanned PDF of an annual report is unreadable to a screen reader and invisible to search — usually the answer is to publish the key content as web pages and keep the PDF as a download.

Be specific about who maintains it afterwards

Say who will edit the site after launch and how technical they are. If the honest answer is "a part-time communications coordinator and sometimes a volunteer," write that down. It is the most useful line in the document, and it should drive the editing model, the training scope and the handover documentation.

Ask explicitly what handover includes: accounts, architecture documentation, editing instructions, and training for named staff. A site your team cannot maintain is a recurring cost disguised as a capital project.

Ask about the Google Ad Grant, if you are eligible

Eligible 501(c)(3)s can receive in-kind Google Ads spend through the Ad Grant program, but it carries site-side and account requirements a typical nonprofit site does not meet by default — conversion tracking, sufficient landing-page content, and an account structure that survives policy review.

If you have the grant or intend to apply, put it in the RFP so the build accounts for it. Retrofitting is possible but wasteful, and a vendor who has done it before will say so.

Give the board timeline honestly

If the contract needs board approval and the board meets on the third Tuesday of alternate months, say that in the RFP. Vendors can plan around a slow approval cycle; they cannot plan around one they discover in week three. The same applies to any funder approval the project depends on.

A checklist before you publish

Confirm the document states: the funding shape and period; a budget or a range; your ranked audiences; the CRM, payment and email stack and what is staying; which giving types are in scope; the accessibility standard and verification method; the URL preservation requirement; which documents must be findable; who maintains the site afterwards and how technical they are; what handover includes; whether the Google Ad Grant is in play; and the real approval calendar.

That document will get you proposals you can compare, from vendors who understand that a nonprofit site has to satisfy a donor, a funder and a beneficiary without a full-time webmaster holding it together.

We give a bid or no-bid answer on solicitations within two business days, and we will tell you when a project is not a fit. You can send us the documents, read how we approach nonprofit website design, or work through the RFP and procurement FAQ first. For the AI-search side of nonprofit visibility, see our guide to GEO for nonprofits.