Request for proposals can take on many different shapes, sizes and flavours. No two organizations are alike and subsequently, no two RFPs are alike. However, there are certainly some common elements that need to be included in any strong RFP, to give a potential vendor an opportunity to provide a suitably strong response. Requests that are vague can elicit vague proposals, or more likely, if a company deems an RFP a waste of their time, they will not submit a response at all. The following are elements that I have identified as key to strong RFPs. 

Introduction:

• History of the organization;
• Brief summary of the project & overall objectives;
• State of the current website and URL(if it exists).

Budget:

Provide a range that can give the prospective bidders an idea of how much functionality they can include in their response.

Proposal Submission Info:

• Who is the main contact for questions and submissions?
• What are the deadlines for questions, proposal submissions and vendor selection?
• What are the organization's selection criteria? You should know if you will be focusing on a low cost solution, or speed of delivery, or vendor experience, etc.

General Comments:

• Desired CMS technology – If you already know that you'd like to use Drupal as your CMS, then state it clearly;
• Level of in-house expertise – This can greatly impact the types of solutions that can be implemented as well as the amount of project management, communication and training required;
• Current website platform & user pain points;Existing technologies – ie: newsletters, CRMs, databases, applications, etc.

Design:

• Existing design or redesign?
• Is there a preferred designer already or should vendor provide?
• Does the organization have a style guide with colours, fonts, logo, etc.?
• If not, do you have certain website styles that you like? 
• Provide links if at all possible!
• Take a look at our design questionnaire for more ideas.

Users/Target Audience:

• Level of technical expertise;
• Bandwidth or accessibility concerns;
• List of the main user groups that will be use the website.

Objectives / Outputs:

This is the section where you essentially list the objectives of all the various components of your website, what the output should be and how you see them being implemented on the website. It can also be called 'requirements' or 'deliverables.' An objective might be to engage a certain user base through regular email communication, the output might be an electronic newsletter and the way it is to be implemented might be through a 3^rd party application, such as Mailchimp. Be sure to state which outputs are 'set in stone' (ie: we have invested in this 3^rd party application and thus will be using it) and which outputs require more creative direction from the potential vendor (ie: we need a newsletter but are open to any method to deliver this newsletter to our users).

Requirements vs Optional

It is always quite useful to prioritize all objectives as follows:

• Primary functionality (must haves)
• Secondary functionality (nice to haves)
• Optional functionality

We've also set up a web form to make it easier for people to send us RFPs.

Accessibility

As originally expressed by Denis Boudreau, if you want to include accessibility in your RFP:

1. Mention that compliance to existing accessiblity standards is a formal requirement on the project (WCAG 2.0 AA is a good target)
2. Mention that the accessiiblity skills of the expert hired will be evaluated (and find someone to do if if you can't do it yourself)
3. Evaluate the accessiblity of your would-be supplier's website. (don't hire a badly shod shoemaker)
4. Only consider a project completed once a proper validation has been confirmed by an independent, skilled third party.
5. Make it perfectly clear that overall accessibility compliance is conditional for the final payment.

Make sure you know how accessible your website is required to be by law. The laws are changing in many jurisdictions. 

More Ideas?

If you have any suggestions please add them to the comments below or to the Quora question we initiated to gather community feedback.