A free RFP template written for nonprofits and associations, not adapted from a corporate one. Chapter governance, volunteer permissions, WCAG accessibility, and donation platform integration each get their own section. Takes about twenty minutes to fill in.
Sent to your inbox as an editable document. No sales call attached.
Not a nonprofit? Grab the general website redesign RFP template →
Inside the template
Each block is fillable copy, not a blank prompt. Edit the sample language rather than drafting from a header.
Organization background, project scope with written exclusions, chapter and affiliate structure, content migration, integrations, accessibility, budget range, timeline, and evaluation criteria — each with sample language you can edit.
Platform and CMS, migration and SEO preservation, governance and permissions, and ongoing support. The questions that separate agencies who have run a multi-chapter project from agencies who have not.
Score every proposal on the same terms so the decision holds up in front of a board or a grant committee, rather than coming down to whoever presented last.
Chapter and affiliate governance, volunteer editor permissions, WCAG accessibility requirements, donation and payment platform integration, and CRM handoff.
Why a nonprofit-specific template
Generic RFP templates assume one organization, one website, and a paid content team. Most nonprofits have none of those things. You have chapters or affiliates who want their own pages, volunteers who need to publish without breaking anything, a board that wants to see the numbers before it signs, and accessibility obligations that a corporate template never mentions.
In a federated organization, national owns the brand, chapters own their local content, and nobody has agreed in writing who can publish what. If the RFP does not settle that question, the vendor guesses, and you find out which way they guessed after launch.
Corporate templates ask about the CMS as a technical requirement. For a nonprofit, the real question is whether a volunteer chapter coordinator can update an event listing without a support ticket. That belongs in the RFP, and this template puts it there.
Nonprofits serving the public carry obligations that a marketing brochure site does not. There is a WCAG section for it, with language you can hand directly to a vendor.
Two years from now, when someone asks why you chose the vendor you did, the RFP and the scored evaluation rubric are the answer. That is not just documentation, it is the institutional memory that helps the next person make a better call.
Associations and membership orgs
These organizations run into a version of the same problem, with member data attached. An association website RFP has to cover member authentication, gated content tiers, dues and renewals, event registration, and how the website talks to the AMS. Generic templates skip all of it.
The template includes those sections. If you are running an association rather than a charity, the chapter governance sections map onto regions or special interest groups without changes.
After you send it
Most nonprofits send an RFP, collect five proposals with wildly different prices, and have no structured way to compare them. The scorecard is the part people tell us they use most, because it turns a room full of opinions into a number the board can see.
Want a read on your current site before you write the RFP? The free website analysis tool checks your existing pages for SEO and AI search readiness and gives you something concrete to put in the background section.
Where the template comes from
Content.One powers websites for organizations that run dozens, sometimes thousands, of regional sites under a single brand, including The Salvation Army and others whose chapter structure looks exactly like what this template is scoped to solve. Years of helping nonprofit teams scope, procure, and deliver multi-chapter redesigns is where the harder sections of the template come from — particularly the governance, volunteer editor, and accessibility chapters.
Use the template with any vendor. If you would like a conversation about how Content.One specifically fits a multi-chapter redesign, see how we support nonprofits or talk to our team. The template is yours either way.
Common questions teams ask before they start drafting a nonprofit website RFP.
Yes. Enter an email address and it arrives as an editable document you can adapt however you like.
Eight to fifteen pages covers almost every project. Longer RFPs do not produce better proposals, they produce longer ones. The template lands in that range once filled in.
If a board, a grant condition, or a procurement policy requires competitive bids, yes. For smaller projects a scoped brief and three conversations are often faster and get you to the same place.
That is what it was written for. Chapter governance, local publishing permissions, and shared brand control each get their own section, because those are the requirements corporate templates leave out.
Yes. Member authentication, gated content, dues, and AMS integration are covered, and the chapter sections map onto regions or interest groups.
Put in a real one. Leaving it out does not get you cheaper proposals, it gets you proposals scoped at random. A range is enough, and the template explains how to set one.
Name your requirements rather than a product. Say what editors need to do without a developer, how many sites or chapters you run, and what has to integrate. Let vendors propose the platform against that.
Enter your email and the template arrives in your inbox as an editable document. No sales call attached.
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