Finding the right partner for your fundraising efforts can be one of the most stressful aspects of nonprofit leadership. The right partnership has the potential to catapult your organization to the next level. At the same time, the wrong partnership could cripple your organization for years.
When you stop and consider the sizable investment your organization is about to make in this partner — both in time and money — it seems unreasonable that a single conversation of less than two hours would be sufficient. However, many nonprofit leaders feel like that’s their only option because of the limited amount of time they have available.
3 Ways to Maximize Your Time During the Fundraising RFP Process
So how can you maximize your time during the RFP process and guarantee you’ve done everything you can to achieve predictable success? These three suggestions will help you rethink and restructure your RFP timeline to lead your organization to the best partnership possible:
- Reduce the quantity of finalists to allow for more quality interaction with each of them.
- Consider a half-day working session where the two groups roll up their sleeves and begin to whiteboard the initial strategy. This will allow you to not only see how the collective team approaches solutions, but also experience firsthand if there is any synergy in the way you communicate.
- As an alternative, determine if there is a way to allow for a pre-engagement test, where you begin working on a portion of the engagement as a way to evaluate the partnership.
Ready to take the Guesswork out of Your RFP Process?
Regardless of how you structure the timeline, you must consider whether or not your RFP process is positioning your organization to make a well-informed decision. If you’re ready to find out how to make RFPs work for your organization, download our resource “Request for Proposal: Are You Asking the Questions That Will Help You Find the Right Partner?” today.
Does your organization move too rapidly during the final stages of the RFP process? What factors prompt organizations to speed up when they should take it slow?