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Top down view of hands drawing in a notebook on a table with symbols, arrows, and sketches of components of a proposal.
Student sketching ideas for a Request for Proposal

Request For Proposal (RFP)

A RFP is a document created to ask interested organizations to submit a plan to solve a problem. These plans are then used by the requesting company to decide which organization is best suited to complete the task.

A RFP is composed of the following three major pieces:

  • A summary of RFP's objective
  • Information on the company that is requesting the proposed work
  • Detailed information about what is being requested

The detailed information contains the following:

  • A timeline for the project including when it will start
  • Information about the cost of the given proposal
  • Extra requests that are not required but would be good additions to the project
  • Suggestion of how the proposal should be organized