Request for Proposals - Marketing

Snow City Arts
Project: One-Year Marketing Plan
Date Released: February 27, 2024
Proposals Due: March 29, 2024

Mission & History

Snow City Arts’ (SCA) mission is to inspire and educate children and youth in hospitals through the arts. SCA is unique in the Chicago area with our focus on arts education for children and youth in pediatric hospitals. However, we compete with our in-hospital peers for attention, funds, and physical space. In the broader funding world, we are seen as filling a unique gap, but our in-hospital placement and our inability to serve children for a consistent, set period of time makes us exceptions to how most arts education organizations function. SCA is unique among our national peers in the Arts in Health field because our focus is on arts learning and education. SCA’s artists are on our staff and have set days and hours–we see this as a firm commitment to artists and a demonstration of our focus on education. Further, we provide consistent and regular professional development for our team. SCA has a Theory of Change, Assessment Tools, and Best Practices. SCA began its Racial Equity journey in 2017 and is a current and active cohort member of Enrich Chicago.

SCA’s expansion to Virtual Learning in 2020 has opened new opportunities for partnership as we consider how we might engage more young people. We have positioned ourselves as an organization steeped in interventions and disruptions that bring joy and creativity to standards-based arts-learning with a sensitivity to trauma-informed program design, an emphasis on student-driven engagement, and a dedication to privacy.

Context for the work:

SCA undertook a broad marketing/branding project in 2010, which included a new logo, letterhead, brochure, and website. SCA convened a marketing retreat in late 2015 to evaluate the organization’s brand positioning. SCA set a goal in its strategic plan and through a partnership with The Chicago Community Trust’s SMART growth program to bring marketing back into focus and set a course for advancement. SCA’s last full Marketing Plan was produced in 2016 and implemented through 2019.

In 2020, SCA deviated from its Strategic Planning goal to generate a new Marketing Plan–and other goals–to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. SCA shifted our work to virtual offerings, initiating partnership conversations with organizations outside of healthcare and broadening our messaging and delivery methods to engage new audiences.

SCA is maintaining a suite of virtual offerings in addition to resuming our in-person hospital work and is seeking guidance on a new one-year focused marketing plan that will target corporations, minority communities, and healthcare professionals to grow the SCA community – from an awareness, fundraising, and programmatic engagement and partnership standpoint – and help us focus our marketing on high impact efforts that balance the time constraints facing SCA staff.

Statement of Purpose

Marketing at SCA has been evolving because of new offerings from SCA and pandemic disruptions and has seen a lot of transition over the last few years beyond expanding the number of platforms and channels SCA leverages in its marketing efforts. The SCA staff and marketing committee of the board have identified three audiences it would like to target to grow awareness and fundraising opportunities – corporations, healthcare professionals, and minority communities – and is seeking a consultant to identify where to best reach these audiences and what message to deliver to them, culminating in the development a one-year marketing plan that also balances efforts against the competing priorities.

Objectives:

1. Expand SCA community engagement and reach as measured by social media metrics (followers, etc.) and additional recommended metrics to be proposed by consultant and approved by SCA team.
   
2. Determine highest-impact marketing efforts to drive partnership with hospital partners, increase fundraising, and raise citywide-awareness of SCA.
   
3. Prioritize marketing efforts to grow and maintain target audiences while balancing resource constraints.
   

Summary of Deliverables

1. Identify where to reach the identified target audiences (corporations, healthcare professionals, and minority communities)
2. Review and refine existing messaging and develop further as needed for these targeted communities while ensuring racial equity to be used in marketing materials.
   
3. Create a one-year strategic marketing plan to target identified audiences along with metrics to understand success of plan, right-sized to be achievable, leveraging existing staff bandwidth.

The timeline for the planning work will take place from June until August, and implementation will continue into December and beyond as agreed upon with the consultant. Initial phase of work is scoped as development of the marketing strategic plan to be completed over approximately 3 months. Ongoing implementation support will be scoped separately, but SCA is interested in understanding the implementation capabilities of bidders.

Budget

This project is grant-funded, and the budget is firm at $10,000 in 2024 for the deliverables above. We also have additional, limited grant funding in 2024 and 2025 for subsequent implementation for the plan, which may be used for continuation with the consultant, or may be used elsewhere.

Form of Bid Proposal

Proposals must consist of the following information in the order indicated below:

1. Cover letter stating interest in the project, including statement of understanding and approach to objectives set forth in the general requirements and deliverables.
   
2. Technical qualifications and experience with similar projects in scope and scale within the last seven years including appropriate reference contact info. In addition, provide an overview of your company including:
   ● A brief history of the organization ● Your mission/vision statement and values
   ● Ownership status/certifications: women owned, minority (what type), disabled veteran, etc. ● Current business relationship with Snow City Arts
   ● Name, title, and email of the company’s primary contact for this project
3. Resumes/bios of key personnel
4. Schedule and timeline for the items listed in the deliverables section of the RFP
5. Evidence of Business License in the City of Chicago, state of Illinois, other relevant locations.
6. Evidence of ability to provide Certificate of Insurance.
7. Cost of services breakdown on the form provided in accordance with general requirements and deliverables.

Evaluation & Selection Process

The client will evaluate and analyze the responses to this RFP utilizing multiple criteria including, but not limited to:

• Fees and costs

• Experience and depth of demonstrated impact

• Strength of Chicago connections

• References

Terms & Conditions

All information received by supplier in connection with this RFP is the confidential property of Snow City Arts.

Supplier may not use, disclose, or duplicate this RFP for any purpose other than preparing a response as requested in this document without obtaining SCA’s prior written consent. Supplier shall keep SCA’s data confidential and prevent its disclosure to any other party. Further, supplier shall restrict the disclosure of this RFP and SCA’s data to those of supplier’s employees who have a need to know. Unless supplier has SCA’s prior written permission, it will not 1) associate supplier’s products or services with SCA or SCA’s operations, or 2) represent to anyone that SCA has employed or endorsed supplier’s products or services.

SCA has issued this RFP to solicit bids from potential suppliers for a comprehensive solution to the requirements as outlined in this document. Only the execution of a written contract will obligate SCA in accordance with the terms and conditions contained in such contract.

Suppliers must disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest and discuss them with SCA’s management. Any activity that is approved, despite the actual or apparent conflict, must be documented.

All costs associated with the preparation of a Proposal or contract in response to this RFP will be borne solely by the supplier. SCA does not assume responsibility or liability for any costs you may incur in responding to this RFP, including attending meetings, site visits, or negotiations.

All Proposals shall remain the property of the Supplier.

Please note that SCA is not committed to any course of action as a result of its issuance of this RFP and/or its receipt of a Proposal from you or other companies in response to it. In particular, you should note that SCA may:

1. Award a contract in connection with this RFP at any time
   
2. Award only a portion of the contract
   
3. Negotiate with one or more companies
   
4. Not accept Proposals after the stated submission deadline
   
5. Not accept the lowest priced Proposal
   
6. Reject any or all Proposals
   
7. Verify Proposal information with supplier’s clients and prior personnel
   

Term of Validity

Your Proposal must remain valid for a period of 90 days after the Proposal submittal deadline set forth. Contractual Agreement

The manner and time of payment will be addressed via the supplier or Snow City Arts-initiated contract/letter of agreement.

Application Instructions

Please inform Snow City Arts of your intent to bid by emailing Alex Knapik at alex@snowcityarts.org.

Any questions or other inquiries from your company concerning this RFP must be submitted via e-mail to to Alex at alex@snowcityarts.org. DEADLINE - Proposal must be received electronically, at the email address listed below, no later than 5pm on March 29, 2024.

Please submit all proposals and relevant information to alex@snowcityarts.org.

Snow City Arts is an equal opportunity employer. Snow City Arts is committed to building a culturally diverse and pluralistic team and vendor portfolio. ALAANA-owned and identified firms and individuals (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, Native American), trans and gender nonconforming people, people from poor and working-class backgrounds, and individuals with disabilities are encouraged to apply.