RFP for Development and Hosting of Website
Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management
Overview
The Entrepreneurship Division (ENT) of the Academy of Management represents a group of individuals with strong interests in the field of entrepreneurship, including academics conducting scholarly research and teaching in the field of entrepreneurship, consultants working with entrepreneurs, managers in entrepreneurial firms and so forth. The ENT division has experienced rapid growth in membership in recent years. This has made communication between the leaders of the ENT division (the governance committee) and the members extremely challenging; it has also become increasingly difficult for members to share resources, know what information and resources are available and from whom and to stay abreast of what's going on in the division and in the field of entrepreneurship. ENT has relied on a very simply website maintained by a member of the division who graciously volunteered for this task; the site currently provides very little reason for members to go to the site and it does not adequately convey a positive image of the ENT division and the many activities going on within it. We recognize that a new website could help us address the communication problems, provide a central place members go for critical information and communications and more accurately convey the value of belonging to our organization.
We would like to receive proposals for the development and hosting of our website, that include: a) the content management system, with preference given to an open source solution; b) cost data, including costs that must be paid by the ENT division versus those paid by the development and hosting organization as well as costs for site development versus hosting and maintenance; c) support staff such as number of full and part-time staff members for creating versus hosting and maintenance of the site and level of support offered such as 24/7 support or other; d) service level agreement specifying the level of service provided (e.g., server devoted to our site, when additional server or server space will be allocated, etc.) and ensuring reporting statistics for ENT officers on site visitors, usage of areas on site, countries visitors from and so on; and e) how site security and ENT members' privacy will be maintained. The site must comply with ADA and other government requirements. The website development organization should expect to come up with several prototype designs for the site and then work with a small group of ENT division officers on the final look, features and functionality of the website. Members of the ENT governance committee will subsequently be assigned to and provide content for different sections of the website.
Goals
The goals of this project include developing a more sophisticated website that more accurately conveys the mission and activities of the ENT division, allows for and encourages communication among ENT members and becomes a central location for information for entrepreneurship scholars, teachers and practitioners. The website should signal that the ENT division leaders and members actively pursue the division's mission: "We grow entrepreneurship scholars."
Measures of success would include increased traffic on the website, members indicating they have more and better communication from ENT leadership (i.e., feel better informed about decisions and activities in the division) and members perceiving the site provides valuable information about activities and resources for ENT scholars, teachers and practitioners.
Infrastructure and Hosting
The website should rely on an open source content management system such as Joomla, Plone or Drupal that offer numerous features, frequent updating and fairly easy modification by users. The website pages should load quickly, pictures or images on the site should change regularly, site should have consistent design or layout for all pages, password-protected security for some locations, a search engine for the site and easy navigation for the site. The site must have a forms/editor manager that allows us to use forms such as election ballots or surveys so we can e-mail all members with a link to the site, they can enter and complete the form and the ENT leaders can receive the results/data from the forms in a database exported to Excel or another spreadsheet. The site must have basic features such as a section with information on the division and its officers, e-mail capability (e.g., to e-mail officers), security so non-ENT members cannot access ballots or other confidential parts of the website, direct links to key organizations such as the parent organization-the AOM-for joining the ENT division or the Kauffman Foundation that supports entrepreneurship research and education. The hosting organization will develop a new design template for the ENT division website with graphic design quality comparable to that of a major university.
The hosting organization should maintain the website but division officers should have access to and capability of uploading and adding information to their sections of the website. We recognize that universities may want to put in a proposal for this project and may wish to rely on existing resources and infrastructure; in this case, they should address the issues detailed in the overview section at the beginning of the RFP (e.g., whether they will provide a dedicated server, amount of space on the server, number of staff people and so forth). Since the ENT website has not been hosted previously, we have no experience on which to base our resource needs; thus proposals should include a discussion of how the hosting organization will adapt or adjust to higher or lower infrastructure needs than anticipated.
Content on the website will be provided by the ENT Communications Committee who will solicit it from the division officers and division members. The hosting organization may be asked to upload the content produced by members of the ENT division.
Budget
The ENT division will consider proposals with alternative means for paying for the site, including but not limited to an organization donating services and resources (e.g., in exchange for having the site housed at their organization), the hosting organization charging universities to post their logo and a direct link on this site, the ENT division paying for some or all of the cost or the hosting organization developing an entrepreneurial model to cover the costs such as a consortium of organizations or universities providing financial and other support for the site.
Length of Contract
The ENT division will award a three-year contract for development, hosting and maintenance of the website. Renewal of the contract for additional years may be negotiated near the end of the three-year time period.
Timeline for Project
| April 2, 2008 | RFP issued by ENT division |
| May 30, 2008 | Deadline for submitting proposals in response to the RFP |
| June 15, 2008 | Contract awarded & notification sent to all organizations that submitted proposals |
| July 16, 2008 | Several prototypes for website design submitted to ENT committee |
| August 8, 2008 | New website launched to entire ENT division membership |
Submission of Proposals:
Proposals should be sent via e-mail as a word, pdf, powerpoint or excel file to Melissa Baucus, m.baucus@louisville.edu by May 30, 2008. Questions can be sent by e-mail to Melissa or she can be reached by phone at 502-852-2837.