• What are recovery or stimulus grants and contracts?
• Who gets the money?
• Where can I find information on each Federal Agency's Recovery Act plans?
• Where can I find information on State Recovery Plans and State Recovery grant and contract opportunities?
• Where can I find Federal grant and contract opportunities related to the Recovery Act?
• Where can I find additional resources and information on the Recovery Act?

An outline is your friend. And the time you take to properly prepare it will pay off down the road. Here are some things to consider when preparing your outline:

• Your RFP/RFA is your guide. Sometimes it will tell you exactly how your proposal should be organized, at least with respect to major headings. You may also be able to ferret out your first level of sub-headings from Section L (instructions), Section M (evaluation criteria) and/or Section C (statement of work).



• Don't use too many levels. The more levels you have, the more difficult it will be for you/your team and for reviewers to follow your proposal. Personally, I like three levels:

I. Major Heading

A. First Sub-Heading

(1) Sub-sub Heading

Of course, some RFPs/RFAs will dictate the specific structure of your proposal. In such cases, you need to follow those instructions. 

• Don't think of your outline as being carved in stone. Outlining is really an evolving process. I often change my outlines several times over the course of a proposal because I find -- after things have been written -- that they just don't fit where I thought they would.

I've heard people say that they don't really know how to prepare an outline. That's not surprising because it's often not as easy as it sounds. It can be a frustrating exercise and can take time to get it right. But in the end, you'll be glad you spent the time.

The Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) has a useful section on developing outlines. Check it out  here.

1. How much material can we recycle? The RFP for this bid is very similar to the RFP that we responded to five years ago. There are some differences, but on the whole they are very much alike. This was not the case with past RFPs for this same project, which differed extensively each time. So some of the questions we are asking ourselves are: How much of the previous proposal can we recycle? Can we re-use entire sections or just paragraphs here and there?  Should we focus on paraphrasing as opposed to just lifting pieces verbatim? 



2. My client will be required to subcontract a substantial amount of work to small businesses. The small businesses that have been working on the current contract have become large and are no longer eligible to participate. So the following questions now arise: How can the project be divided up into discrete chunks that could be handled by various small business subcontractors? How many small businesses should be part of the bid? What will these small businesses be responsible for? 



3. Finally, of course, there are the issues relating to proposal preparation. Who will be responsible for preparing each section of the technical proposal? How best to communicate and coordinate with those who will be working on the business proposal?  Who will coordinate with the selected small business subcontractors and what specific role will they play in preparing the proposal?

Just a few of the typical questions that need to be addressed during the proposal planning stage. 

Some time ago, my friend Heidi wrote this post on "Getting Started With Proposal Graphics." She gives some good pointers about how to think about and use graphics in proposals even if you are not sure exactly what graphics you are going to use.

Now The Proposal Guys blog has an interview with the principal of a graphics design firm that specializes in proposal graphics. Years ago, such firms probably didn't even exist. But these days, we often have a limited number of pages in which to tell our proposal story and increased competition for funding. Thus, we need every edge we can get. And good proposal graphics in combination with a well-written proposal can give us that edge.

One of the things that I like best about this article is the graphic at the very top -- "which proposal would you rather evaluate?"  If this doesn't make a compelling case for the use of graphics in proposals, I'm not sure what does.

So get out your crayons..

I'm now preparing the technical section of a DOD proposal for a long-time client. Much of it is similar to a proposal I helped prepare for her late last year, so I can recyle parts of it. But I still need to do some background research and gather information on the local market for a couple of categories of healthcare specialists. My client doesn't like to do this research, and neither do I. But I'm doing it anyway.

Then on Monday, re-compete #3 arrived. Oh joy. It is due at the end of May, so we have six weeks to work on it. My client sent me the RFP, which I haven't read yet. I did open the file, but when I saw that the RFP was over 125 pages, I closed it up without actually looking at it. Maybe I'll read it today. My client and I have been playing telephone tag, so we haven't talked about the proposal yet. But this assignment will keep me pretty busy for the next month and a half. 

Then maybe I can take a little vacation.

While we all try to do as good a job as possible on all sections of our proposals, the evaluation criteria and their associated scoring systems can tell you some very important things:

• Where to put your emphasis: if your technical approach will be worth 50 points and your corporate capabilities will be worth 20 points, you should plan on spending much more of your time preparing the technical approach than on preparing your coporate capabilities. You can have great capabilities, but if you do poorly on sections that are valued higher, the capabilities may not help you overcome the lower scores you receive on other, more important sections. 



• How to assign your proposal staff: Similarly, you may need to assign more personnel to work on the higher-scoring sections than on those that will be scored lower. 



• How to alllocate your pages. If the RFP/RFA does not specify the exact number of pages for each individual section, you can use the evaluation criteria as a guide. If your proposal will be a total of 50 pages, for example, then at least 25 of those pages should be devoted to your technical approach (50 pages x 50 points).  This is a very broad measure, however, and you will need to strike the right balance between the number of pages and number of points depending on how much material will need to go in each section. But it is a starting place. 

After hanging on to bidders' proposals FOR A FULL YEAR, the government finally contacted all of the bidders and asked them to submit revised proposals. Instead of telling each bidder exactly how their original proposal was deficient, the government apparently issued many of the same vague deficiency statements to all of them. So instead of saying something like this:

"John Smith does not appear to have 10 years of relevant work experience."

They have said something to the effect that:

"The team of people that your firm proposed for Task 1 do not have the required minimum qualifications. The team of people that your firm proposed for Task 2 do not have the required minimum qualifications. The team of people that your firm proposed for Task 3 do not have the required minimum qualifications..."  And so on.

Moreover, in an amendment issued a year after proposals were submitted, the government set forth additional or revised qualifications that each category of personnel must have. They also changed the criteria for other (non-personnel) sections of the technical proposal. Then yesterday, the government issued another amendment that contained answers to bidders' questions and additional instructions on how to submit complete revised proposals.   

It's all quite complicated and confusing and makes me wonder why any firm would want do business with the government when they have to put up with this nonsense.

Do you pay taxes? If you do, this is some of what you're paying for.

• Overall Proposal Checklist. I created this checklist years ago and adapt it to many of the proposals I work on. It's a great starting place.



• Personnel Checklist. If you're including more than just a few personnel in your proposal, you can use a checklist to keep track of all the personnel-related items that need to be gathered or completed for each individual -- resume, letter of commitment, blurb, salary and other cost-related information, etc.



• Subcontractor Checklist. I often work on proposals involving several subcontractors and need to keep track of all the information that they are supposed to submit to the prime contractor -- resumes and other personnel information, capability statements, cost proposals, institutional letters of commitment, required forms, and other proposal-specific info.



• Assignment Checklist. I use this to keep apprised of who is responsible for what section(s) of a proposal, how far along it is, and when it is due. 

Right now, I'm working with a client to make revisions to a previously-submitted proposal and respond to questions posed by the government. To do this, we need to go through and make necessary changes to the qualifications and resumes that were previouly submitted for perhaps 50 or so people. It's a very tedious task. So I created a checklist/matrix for my client that contains all the categories of personnel and the specific qualifications that each individual is required to possess. It won't make the task any less tedious, but it will make it a lot easier. 

I can't imagine doing a proposal without checklists. 

• Many of these services can also provide you with information on solicitations issued by state and local governments. While more and more state and local governments are putting their bid opportunities on the Internet, not all of them have geared up to do this.
  
  
• Since FedBizOpps and Grants.gov may not cover all all bureaus and departments within each federal agency, you may be able to get access to these bureaus' bid opportunities via a private service rather than having to search for them by going to individual websites.
  
  
• If you are interested in seeing bid opportunities at two or three levels -- federal, state and/or local -- you may be able to receive these opportunities via daily e-mails or through online access. This can be a real time-saver.
  

One of the private serices that has been around for a long time is Bidnet (see clip below), which offers customizable packages to meet your specific needs and interests. However, since Bidnet is only one of many private services, it will probably be worth your while to research and compare these services with respect to their prices and offerings.

clipped from bidnet.com With BidNet, you will have access to Government Bids from thousands of Federal, State and Local agencies, and see bid opportunities you won't find anywhere else. Our diverse network of agencies will give you the competitive intelligence needed to compete effectively for the nation's largest buyer of goods and services - governments across the nation and right in your hometown.

• Updates to the website.
• All grant notices.
• Grant notices that you select based on specific criteria.
• Grant notices by funding opportunity number.

These notifications are great timesavers because you don't have to keep going to the Grants.gov or FedBizOpps website to find or track the bid opportunities you are interested in. Instead, they come right to your mailbox.

At the website, you can look up procurement notices by specific agencies or you can search for them by key words or other criteria. If you find a procurement notice that interests you, you can sign up to receive e-mail notification when, for instance, a full solicitation is released or when an amendment is issued for that particular product or service. When I'm working on a proposal for a client, I always look it up on FedBizOpps and sign up for it so that I'm notified when an amendment comes out.

You can also sign up to be notified of all solicitations or synopses issued by a particular agency. For example, since I am interested in USAID contracts, I get an e-mail nearly every day that lists all new USAID synopses and solicitations that have been posted by that agency.

To sign up for the FedBizOppos notification service, go to the website and click on Vendor Notification Services on the right-hand side, under "Related Links."  You'll then be taken to a page where you can select from the following options:

1. Register to receive all notices by solicitation number.
2. Register to receive all notices from selected agencies and product service classifications.
3. Register to receive all procurement notifices.
4. Register to receive a report of all vendor notification registrations.

One of the problems with this notification service is that there is no option to receive notifications by key words. So, if I am interested only in USAID contracts that relate to HIV/AIDS, I can't tell FedBizOpps to just send me notices that have something to do with that topic. Instead, I receive all notices about USAID contracts, whether or not they pertain to HIV/AIDS.

One way to get around this problem is to sign up with a private bid notification service. That will be the topic of my next post.

1. Before the proposal is printed and assembled, you need to check it against the RFP/RFA. If you've done a compliance matrix, you need to make sure that everything on the matrix is filled in. If you're not using a compliance matrix, then you need to go through your RFP/RFA once again to make sure you have addressed everything that's asked for, particularly (but not limited to ) Sections L and M -- the instructions and the evaluation criteria. You may think that by now, you know your RFP/RFA by heart and don't need to do this final check, but you would be wrong. In many cases, you'll find things in it that you don't remember ever seeing before. By leaving some time for this final check, you'll hopefully have time to correct any deficiencies in your proposal before it's submitted.



2. The second final check comes after the proposal has been printed but before it's bound. Printers are notorious for misbehaving when you are stretched for time and have an important document to get out. So you need to go through the printed copies. Are all of the pages there and numbered correctly? Are there any pages that are upside down?  Are there pages that are badly smudged from the printer? Are there pages that are too faint because the printer is running out of ink or low on toner?  Did you forget to insert a page that was printed separately?  And so on. If you neglect this check, you'll probably find these errors later -- after you've submitted your proposal. Not a good thing.  

 Final checks -- they're a pain but they're important. Add them to your proposal checklist.