Writing a website RFP or brief your board will approve
Most nonprofit website briefs are either a wishlist of features or a copy-paste of last time’s document. Neither gets you comparable quotes, and neither gives your board what it actually needs to say yes with confidence. Here’s what a brief needs to do its job.
Why most nonprofit website briefs fail before they’re sent
The most common brief I see is a list of pages and features: a homepage, a donate button, a blog, maybe a member portal. It reads like a spec, but it skips the one thing an agency actually needs to price and design against, which is the problem the current site creates. Without that, every agency responding is guessing at scope, which means the quotes that come back won’t be comparable, and the board approving the spend won’t understand what it’s actually approving.
The other common failure is the opposite problem: a brief inherited from a previous rebuild, or borrowed from another organisation, with sections that no longer apply and gaps where your actual requirements should be. It reads as thorough. It rarely is.
What your board actually needs to see
A board isn’t approving a website. It’s approving a spend, a timeline, and a level of risk. The brief is what lets them do that with real information rather than trust alone. That means it needs to answer, in plain terms: what specific problem this solves, what it will cost within a realistic range, how long it will take, who is accountable for the decision, and what happens if it goes over budget or past deadline.
The sections a working brief needs
This isn’t a template to fill in mechanically, but most working briefs I’ve reviewed cover the same ground.
- Organisational context: who you are, who you serve, and why the site matters to that work
- The specific problem with the current site, described in outcomes, not features
- The outcomes the new site needs to achieve, in terms you could measure afterwards
- Non-negotiables: accessibility standard, Ad Grant compliance, data or privacy requirements, integrations with existing systems
- A realistic budget range, not a placeholder or a figure copied from elsewhere
- A timeline with the dates that actually matter, a funding deadline, an event, a compliance date
- Who makes the final decision, and how proposals will be compared
Two to four pages is usually enough. A brief that runs much longer often means the problem statement is still unclear, not that the project is genuinely more complex.
Questions price and portfolio can’t answer
A portfolio shows you what an agency has built. It doesn’t show you how they’ll behave six months into your project, which is where most nonprofit website relationships actually succeed or fail. Ask directly: who specifically will be doing the work, not just pitching it; what happens after launch, is there a maintenance arrangement or are you on your own; how do they handle scope changes once the brief is underway; and can they speak to your accessibility and Ad Grant requirements specifically, not generically.
For most nonprofit projects, a fixed price against a clearly scoped brief is easier for a board to approve and easier to hold an agency to than an open hourly arrangement. Hourly suits genuinely ongoing work. It suits a one-off build with a defined outcome far less well.
Red flags in the proposals that come back
- A quote with no line items, just a single total figure
- No mention of accessibility unless you specifically asked
- A generic “nonprofit discount” pitch with no evidence of sector-specific work
- Vague language about “ongoing support” with no specifics on what that includes or costs
- Pressure to decide quickly, or a quote that expires within days
None of these disqualify an agency on their own. Together, or unexplained, they’re worth a direct follow-up question before you sign anything.
Not sure your current brief will hold up?
A Digital Capacity Diagnosis gives you a board-ready view of where your current site actually stands, which is the fastest way to write a brief that targets real problems rather than guesses. $1,500 + GST.
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