ENGL 309: Proposals and Reports

Although your texts provide the best information about writing business proposals, there are also some other library resources that can help:

A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a document organizations use when soliciting bids for a project. RFPs are used extensively by government agencies where competitive bidding is required.

An RFP generally contains the following parts:

• Brief project overview
• Your organization's background
• Project goals
• Scope of the work & Deliverables (this would include technical requirements for the work)
• Project timeline
• Budget
• Criteria for selection
• Proposal format & Timeline

RFPs can be complicated documents with multiple appendices that break down technical requirements for a project. In the end, an RFP answers these questions:

• Who - Describe the organization requesting proposal, e.g. "Iowa State University is a land-grant university located in Ames, Iowa"
• What - What is the project?, e.g. "We are soliciting bids for replacement of parking lots at Jack Trice Stadium."
• When - What is the timeline for the project?
• Where - Where is the work site?
• Why - What is the goal of the project?
• How - Describe the scope of the project and any technical requirements.

Requests for Proposal (RFP) are used to to solicit bids for projects. Government agencies frequently use RFPs to find bidders for competitively bid projects. Below are some examples of completed RFPs: