Tip: Drafting the RFP
Grantmakers observe that it is important to strike a balance between the need to make each proposal consistent and the desire for enough flexibility to allow the unique ideas and experiences of applicants to emerge. Two grantmaker suggestions:
- “Using more open-ended questions allows for more diversity of thought, and allows people who may be uncomfortable with the process to share their perspectives. If your RFP is too complicated, too structured, or outside the context of their understanding, some of the hard-to-reach communities will simply not apply. But the difficulty with open-ended questions is: How do you evaluate proposals against each other? That’s the trade-off.”
- “We left a competition very open because we wanted it to encourage creative responses. But because it was so open-ended no one knew what to do.”
Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by Candid Learning for Funders using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.
This takeaway was derived from Using Competitions & RFPs.
