1. Executive Overview & Background

• Network Website: Representing Achievement First as a unified overarching organization.
• Regional Hubs: Providing localized information, news, and regulatory resources for state and municipal contexts.
• School Websites (41 Connected Micro Sites): Comprehensive pages for each school location within a single governed system, designed to adapt easily as schools open, expand, or relocate.

2. Context & Opportunity

3. Project Objectives

• User Experience: Deliver an intuitive, mobile-first design allowing key users to complete priority tasks rapidly.
• Brand Cohesion: Establish a recognizable AF network brand experience while honoring distinct regional and local school identities.
• Robust Local Sites: Provide each of the 41 schools with a connected robust, functional site rather than a basic landing page.
• Streamlined Publishing: Enable intuitive content management for non-technical users across network, regional, and school levels.
• Governance & Workflows: Implement role-based permissions, editorial review workflows, content expiration rules, and structured approval paths.
• Single-Source Content: Utilize structured data models so shared school and regional attributes are updated once and rendered consistently across the ecosystem.
• Strategic Goals Support: Drive measurable conversions for student enrollment, staff recruitment, family involvement, philanthropy, and advocacy, including personalized donor engagement paths tailored to interest areas and giving levels.
• Compliance & Standards: Exceed industry benchmarks for WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility, multilingual localization, privacy, security, page speed, SEO, and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).
• Scalability: Build a technical architecture that expands seamlessly as new schools, integrations, or custom tools are introduced.

4. Priority Audiences

5. Detailed Scope of Work

5.1 Discovery, Strategy, & User Experience

• Facilitate stakeholder alignment on goals, KPIs, audience prioritization, governance, and risk mitigation.
• Perform comprehensive technical, content, SEO, accessibility, and analytics audits of the existing web footprint.
• Conduct user research with key demographics including multilingual families, staff, and mobile users.
• Develop information architecture, user flows, navigation structures, and search strategies.
• Produce and usability-test interactive prototypes and responsive wireframes prior to front-end engineering.

5.2 Visual Design & Brand System

• Translate AF's refreshed visual brand guidelines into an engaging, modern, and accessible digital design system.
• Create responsive page designs across mobile, tablet, and desktop breakpoints for all tier templates.
• Build a component-based design library enabling modular page creation without breaking layout rules.
• Partner with AF's internal design team and hand off fully documented Figma or equivalent design assets.

5.3 Multi-Tier Architecture & Ecosystem Structure

5.4 Content Strategy, Migration, & Governance

• Audit legacy web content, documents, media assets, active forms, and URL redirect patterns.
• Develop a content migration strategy identifying content for retention, rewriting, consolidation, or archiving.
• Define content taxonomies, structured fields, editorial ownership models, and review intervals.
• Execute migration and QA for all approved network content, regional hubs, and all 41 school websites.
• Configure granular role-based permissions (central admin, regional editor, school publisher) with approval workflows.
• Enable cascading content distribution (e.g., syndicate a network update to all schools or specific regions).
• Implement an organized document library for required school policies, forms, and regulatory disclosures.

5.5 Core Functionality & Technical Integrations

• Find a School & Volunteer Portal: Interactive map and list interface with geolocation, grade-level filtering, school tour videos embedded, direct enrollment routing, and localized volunteer sign-up capabilities across individual school sites.
• Site Search: Indexed global and scoped search across pages, documents, news, and school profiles with facet filters.
• Forms & System Integration: Embed web forms connected to key third-party platforms (SchoolMint, HubSpot, Greenhouse, etc.).
• Alert Banners: Targeted notification banners for emergency closures or notices at network, regional, or school levels.
• Enhanced Funder & Donor Experience: Sophisticated, tiered donor pathways going beyond a single landing page to present customized content, impact stories, high-impact video storytelling capabilities, digital Annual Report (AR) vision integration, and engagement opportunities based on donor interest areas and giving levels.
• Technical SEO & Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): Structured schema markup, XML sitemaps, semantic tags, automated redirect handling, and AEO strategies to optimize content discovery across AI search engines and conversational assistants.
• Analytics & Tracking: Google Tag Manager & GA4 setup supporting rollup and property-level event/conversion reporting, including custom GA4 reports and event tracking dashboards tailored to core functional areas such as student enrollment and talent recruitment.

5.6 Accessibility, Localization, & Web Performance

• WCAG 2.2 AA Compliance: Full adherence to WCAG 2.2 Level AA standards verified via automated tools and manual screen-reader/keyboard testing.
• Multilingual Architecture: Seamless multi-language framework supporting human translations, intuitive language selectors, and localized metadata.
• Document Accessibility: Strategy for handling non-compliant legacy PDFs/documents, identifying core scope vs. optional remediation.
• Core Web Vitals Performance: Target mobile metrics at the 75th percentile: LCP ≤ 2.5s, INP ≤ 200ms, CLS ≤ 0.1.
• Lighthouse Benchmarks: Target scores of 90+ across Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO for key page templates.

5.7 Platform, Architecture, & Security

• CMS Selection: Recommend a modern, secure CMS (e.g., Enterprise WordPress, WordPress Multisite, Drupal, or Headless solution) suitable for non-profit scale.
• Editing Experience: Structured block-based authoring experience preventing accidental layout breaking or accessibility non-compliance.
• Security Protocols: Role-based access controls, SSO/MFA/SCIM capability, SSL, automated backups (vendor must specify backup frequency, retention period, and storage location [on-platform vs. offsite/geo-redundant]; minimum requirements include daily automated backups across all 41 school sites plus network and regional tiers, 30-day retention minimum, Recovery Point Objective [RPO] of 24 hours or less, and Recovery Time Objective [RTO] of 8 hours or less for full platform restore; vendor must describe restore process and confirm testing), vulnerability scanning, and DDoS protection.
• Environments & Deployment: Isolated Dev, Staging, and Production environments with Git-based CI/CD deployment workflows.
• Full Ownership: AF retains 100% ownership of code repositories, design assets, content, data, domain registrations, and credentials.
• Vendor Independence: Avoid proprietary lock-in; transparently disclose all licensing fees, external plugins, and SaaS dependencies.

5.8 Training, Launch, & Post-Launch Warranty

• Role-Based Training: Provide tailored live training and recorded video documentation for central admins, regional editors, and school publishers.
• Migration Transition: Coordinate seamless handoff and DNS cutover with AF's internal IT team and incumbent web host.
• Comprehensive QA: Execute multi-browser/device testing, broken-link verification, 301 redirect validation, and accessibility audits prior to launch.
• Stabilization & Warranty: Provide a post-launch stabilization period and minimum 90-day bug-fix warranty.
• Ongoing SLA Options: Separately priced annual maintenance, hosting, monitoring, and support packages with clear SLAs. SLA pricing must itemize backup/DR and vulnerability management as line items, not bundle them into a general "hosting and support" fee, so AF can compare vendors on these specifically.

6. Critical Proposal Requirements

1. Demonstrated ability to deploy a unified, multi-tier ecosystem (Network, Regional, 41 School Pages).
2. Intuitive CMS publishing experience tailored for non-technical content managers.
3. Single-source data modeling for recurring regional and school attributes.
4. Centralized content syndication capabilities with localized editing controls.
5. Mobile-optimized user journeys featuring a high-performing "Find a School" search experience.
6. Embedded WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard compliance across design and code.
7. Concrete content migration plan covering all network, regional, and school pages.
8. Transparent technology dependencies and full IP ownership transfer to AF.
9. Clear pricing schedule aligning with AF's non-profit budget parameters.

7. Required Deliverables

• Discovery summary report, user research findings, and technical audit documentation.
• Approved information architecture, sitemaps, wireframes, and interactive UX prototypes.
• Digital brand strategy, UI design system, component library, and Figma design files.
• Fully configured CMS hosting the network site, regional hubs, and 41 school websites.
• Custom-developed components (Find a School tool, faceted search, alert system, integrations).
• Completed content migration, formatting, QA, and automated 301 URL redirects.
• Accessibility compliance verification and Web Vitals performance benchmark reports.
• Admin and editor training sessions, video tutorials, and system documentation.
• Production deployment, post-launch stabilization support, and warranty plan.

8. Vendor Qualifications & Expertise

• Proven track record of designing, building, and launching large-scale web platforms.
• Three relevant case studies demonstrating multi-site, federated, or enterprise CMS implementations.
• In-house expertise across digital strategy, UX/UI, accessibility compliance, and engineering.
• Experience working with non-profits, public K-12 education, or public sector clients.
• Strong project management methodologies and executive account governance.
• Adequate insurance coverage (General Liability, Cyber Liability, Errors & Omissions).

9. Proposal Format & Submissions

10. Budgetary Framework

11. Timeline & Procurement Schedule

12. Proposal Evaluation Criteria

13. Submission Guidelines & Contact

Appendix A: Scope & Pricing Assumptions Checklist

• Estimated number of network pages and regional hub structures.
• Baseline page template depth across the 41 school pages.
• Estimated count of unique page templates, content types, and UI components.
• Scope division for content copywriting, editing, data collection, translation, and entry.
• Assumed integration touchpoints, user research sessions, and usability testing rounds.
• Training session counts, user cohorts, and documentation deliverables.
• Warranty terms, SLA response tiers, and conditions governing out-of-scope change orders.