1

Request for Proposals

Enhancing Food Secure Canada’s Online Presence ________________

Deadline for submissions: January 28, 2013 (midnight)

Final deliverables due: July 1, 2013

Submit proposals: by email with ‘RFP for FSC’s online presence’ in the subject line to

Diana Bronson, Executive Director: communications@foodsecurecanada.org

About Food Secure Canada

Food Secure Canada (FSC) is a Canada-wide alliance of civil society organizations and individuals collaborating to advance dialogue and cooperation for policies and programs that advance three interlocking commitments: zero hunger; a sustainable food system; and healthy and safe food.

FSC unites people and organizations working for food security nationally and globally. FSC is a registered non-profit society with a wide membership, which includes local and national organizations and unaffiliated individuals. It works for its members, facilitating collaborative activities by members to advance food security. FSC facilitates a number of networks that bring together people and organizations from across the country for joint projects and advocacy goals. It has a small secretariat based in Montreal and an office in BC.

2

Project Description

An assessment of FSC’s online presence was conducted during the summer of 2012 producing a report and this RFP: A Voice, A Space: Towards an Improved Online Presence for FSC.

FSC currently hosts its main site (http://foodsecurecanada.org), its CRM backend (http://civicrm.org), and its Bits and Bytes (http://bitsandbytes.ca), our collection of community food security resources, all on the Dreamhost (http://dreamhost.com) servers.

We also engage in growing social media outreach using Facebook and Twitter (1050 followers).

This project will create a site using Drupal 7 that can integrate our current activities and add a new component, a shared "wiki" space that can act as an online focal point for the food movement in Canada and those seeking information about food policy.

The goals of the project are:

• to position FSC as a legitimate, reliable food policy information hub, including an engaging space where participants can discuss and exchange using multiple social media tools (youtube, flicker, ppt, pdfs, etc.);

• to increase FSC’s capacity to support national or decentralized projects and knowledge generation, including our own projects and those that are initiated by network members;

• to refine our CRM for increased functionality for internal purposes (tracking relationships) and to facilitate public access to some of the website content; and

• to maximize the use of this site by providing training and advocacy opportunities (i.e.: short videos).

The new site will contain design and functions outlined below.

Please note that FSC has simultaneously issued an RFP to redesign FSC’s logo. We welcome joint submissions to both RFPs – see our website for more details.

Site Statistics

None of the FSC websites are high-traffic sites. In fact, increasing the traffic to the main site is a major priority of this relaunch.

3

The main FSC site (http://foodsecurecanada.org/) gets just over 4,000 visits per month. Just over half of the visitors spent less than 10 seconds on the site, most of them visiting only the front page and one or two internal pages. 49% of the visitors viewed a single page (most often the home page and the Powering UP! Assembly page). Only about 300 visitors came from social media referral (the majority from Facebook). The Bits and Bytes site (http://bitsandbytes.ca/) gets about 350 visitors, three quarters of whom stayed for less than 10 seconds. Three-quarters of the visitors looked at only one page. This site has interesting content but has not been maintained recently. We believe that a consolidation of the sites, improved SEO, an enhanced user experience and promotion by and integration with our social media outreach will dramatically increase traffic. Source: Google Analytics, Sept. 25, 2012

Site Structure and Content The current site is built on Drupal 6. It is very much a "brochure" style site with predominantly static content.

As the graphic above illustrates, the site currently uses a traditional top nav with drop-downs that take users to the secondary levels of the site. There is also a left-hand column that provides a mailing list subscription option, a Paypal donation button, a headline list and links to the Bits and Bytes site, Facebook and Twitter.

The central content space on the site is a single content block. There are currently no dynamic links to social media content, no rich media embeds and no commenting. The site theme does not use responsive design. It was the product of an early web design ethos and took into consideration the capacity the organization had to create content and maintain an online presence.

We understand tools have changed dramatically and want the new presence to capitalize on current technologies to create an engaging, user-friendly space that will keep people coming back.

4

Graphic Design

We are looking for a clean, modern design for the site that will function well and look engaging on mobile devices. We do not want any Flash or any extraneous HTML 5-based animations. We believe a good user interface should get out of the way and let users get on with their tasks and achieve their site goals. The site should be designed with accessibility (including bandwidth restrictions) in mind.

High Level Functionality This is not a comprehensive list of all functionality that the site will have, but it gives a representative idea of the types of things we are looking to do. Our ideal site would have:

• downloads for PDFs, images, audio, and embeddable video with YouTube, and Flickr slideshows (including the capacity of logged-in participants to share resources on the site)

• podcasts, podcast archives, with RSS feeds for different pages

• Google Custom Search instead of the default Drupal searching capability.

• offer the following access levels: Admin, Content Editor, Authenticated Users, others as needed.

• a responsive design theme (perhaps overlaying Drupal)

• easily updatable site content (including images and other rich media) by FSC staff with no coding experience and minimal training

• responsive design so that the site is accessible appropriately on mobile devices

• an integrated database (we currently use CiviCRM, but are open to exploring options) that serves internal needs (relationship tracking, list management, etc.) and potentially offers public access so that visitors can search for food organizations / activities across the country.

• A shared space with the capability to handle:

• a document repository capable of importing the existing Bits and Bytes document repository (with the capacity to add searchable tags). This repository should have templates, policy position papers, case studies, lessons learned and backgrounders

5

• a shared collaborative document space where users can edit, create and comment on documents

• discussion forums • a shared calendar of events • an opportunity to support and start online petitions (using an iPetition

tool like the one available from http://www.change.org/ for example). This section should provide a portal to existing petitions from member organizations so that FSC amplifies the messages and calls to action.

• an “Ask an Advisor” section with a dynamic resource list of policy and issue experts

• a “Water Cooler” area which would serve as general discussion space for the food movement community

• video webinars, hosted on the site, embedded from You Tube or shared from http://www.learningnetwork.thestop.org/

• password protected areas of the site for several different user-groups (ie. Steering Committee, network members, task forces).

Budget (including hosting and maintenance) Our total budget range for this project is $15,000-$30,000 (including taxes and logo development). Hosting and maintenance costs for the first year should also be calculated, so please itemize those costs clearly in the response. We expect this project to include several phases, such as (provided for example only – your process may be different): discovery; design; development; testing; and training.

Please list out the costs or cost ranges for each proposed phase of the project, including deliverables.

Vendor Selection

When selecting a vendor for this project, we will be evaluating candidates on the following criteria:

Experience building flexible Drupal websites that can be easily modified by non-technical users; experience with Drupal 7 preferred.

Vendor should be familiar with building a wiki space using Drupal, Word Press, squarespace (http://squarespace.com) and/or projectforum (http://projectforum.com) or other appropriate platform.

Experience with creating sites that successfully build communities and have interactive features (blogs, discussion forums, campaign tools, etc.).

Experience bringing multiple sites under the umbrella of a single website.

6

Experience working with not-for-profit organizations with advocacy or campaigning as a prime part of their mandate as well as integrating innovative membership and fundraising features.

Experience with CRM software and ability to integrate website design with Civi-CRM, or other CRM software (providing clear rationale if a switch to new software is proposed).

Experience developing sites that meet government accessibility standards, use responsive design and are usable by audiences with low bandwidth..

Experience with developing bilingual sites is strongly desirable.

Solid information architecture skills for organizing content in ways that are intuitive to the site visitor.

Vendor who looks beyond an organization's website and considers how social media platforms, campaign tracking systems and other online elements can be integrated.

Experience with user-testing sites before and after launch (usability, functionality, Q&A and user-needs assessments).

Experience developing sites for mobile platforms including smartphones and tablets.

Interest in food and food security an asset.

Please provide any supporting documents, portfolios, resumes, etc. that demonstrate these skills and background.

Selection Process: • FSC reserves the right to reject any and all proposals received as a result of this

RFP and is not liable for any costs incurred by contractors in response to this RFP.

• Proposals received after the submission deadline will not be considered. • Proposals can be submitted in English or French. • FSC Staff and Executive will review the proposals and convene interviews with a

shortlist from amongst the applicants. • The successful contractor will be selected no later than February 15th. • Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Proposed Timeline

We would like work to begin on this project as soon as possible. The finished work should be completed in six months. We expect the vendor to establish reasonable milestones and sign offs for the project as part of the overall project plan.

Due to cost considerations, the complete RFP and the main background document are only available in English. Submissions are welcome in either English or French.