When I was at my second job as a graphic designer for another company, that company often bent over backwards to bid for governmental Requests for Proposals. They did not rely on commercial clients for their bread and butter, so I guess that mentality stuck with me.

For my own business, I would often jump to bid for RFPs that even roughly had a design aspect, especially for the first few years of having the LLC. City start up programs would often speak of the good money from contracts from public entities, and how they were always looking for small, minority, women owned businesses to work with. With that in mind, I would dump hours of time writing proposals, getting documents notarized, printing the 200 page proposal on high quality paper in 8 copies, binding the proposals, and taking them to the local office myself for delivery, and getting a receipt. Man, it was a lot of work… and you know what… I did not get awarded any of them. One of the RFPs even required spec work… creating a custom design concept for them for free, for the chance to get the contract (no, portfolio samples were not sufficient).

I am re-thinking how I feel about them and their targeting of small, woman-owned, minority-owned businesses. It seems kind of unethical to be targeting these disadvantaged segments, and demand such work upfront with no guarantee of pay upfront.

With commercial clients, I don’t close the deal all the time, but I do win some of the bids. None of my commercial clients had any proposal requirements: no requirements for multiple specialty printed/bound proposal packages with multiple USBs , no requirements of tying my payment as a multiplier of an employee’s salary, no requirements to notarize anything, no requirements to use a special vendor as an intermediary for payment, and not waiting for payment months after the work is done, using my business as a line of credit. My commercial clients rarely even read the proposal, and just jump down to the page with pricing and sign at the end. They pay me 50% upfront on the spot. Writing a proposal for my commercial clients is more of a benefit for me, as a document that outlines my deliverables to the client. Most governmental entities also require a full assignment of copyrights, while commercial clients rarely even know what copyrights are.

It is just so much work to try to win work from governmental entities, I just don’t know if it is worth it. It would have sounded unbelievable to me a few years back, but I am passing on another chance to bid. 

I have gone from bidding for anything roughly design related, only bidding for things that are a good match to my business, and now passing on two RFPs in two months. I do think this is the smart thing to do though to prioritize my time. My time is very valuable and finite, so I can’t dump time into likely dead ends. I guess maybe if I am bored and I want to burn some money, maybe I will try it again, but for now, I am too busy.