How to Write a Website Tender Brief for a Membership Organisation

Most website tenders from membership organisations fail before a supplier reads them. Not because the organisation is unclear about what it wants, but because the brief describes the organisation rather than the job. Suppliers are left to guess at the membership system, the data, the content volume and the budget, so the proposals come back incomparable and the evaluation turns into a guessing game of its own.

This guide is the brief we wish every institute, association and professional body sent us. It is written from the supplier’s side of the table, after a few years of answering these tenders and, more recently, managing the website for a UK chartered institute day to day. The template at the end is yours to copy.

What a supplier needs to know, and why

A website for a membership body is not a brochure with a login. It is a membership system with a public face, and the cost of building it depends almost entirely on four things:

1. What members do on the site. Join, renew, book events, log continuing professional development (CPD), access a directory, download resources, vote. Each one is an integration or a feature, and each has a price.
2. Which systems hold the data. The CRM or membership system, the finance system, the events platform, the learning platform. The website has to talk to these, and the age and openness of their APIs sets the difficulty.
3. How much content exists and who owns it. Four hundred pages of policy PDFs and a journal archive is a different migration from sixty pages of marketing copy.
4. Who will run it after launch. A team of three communications staff with no developer needs a different content management system (CMS) from a digital team with an engineer.

If your brief answers those four questions clearly, every supplier will quote the same job. If it does not, you will get five different jobs quoted and no way to compare them.

The mistakes we see most often

Describing the organisation instead of the task. A page of history and values is fine, but it is not the brief. Suppliers can read your About page.

Hiding the membership system. We have seen tenders that never mention the CRM at all, then reveal in a clarification round that renewals run through a fifteen-year-old system with no API. That single fact can double the cost. Name the system, the version, and whether it has an API you are allowed to use.

No budget. Boards sometimes withhold the budget to “see what the market says”. The market says what it always says: whatever it thinks you will pay. Give a range and ask suppliers what they would do at the bottom and top of it.

Asking for a redesign when you need a rethink. If members cannot find the renewal button, a new visual design will not help. Say what is failing today in measurable terms: renewal drop-off, support tickets about login, time to publish an event.

Weighting the scoring towards the proposal document. The best proposal writers are not always the best builders. Weight the scoring towards relevant work, the named team, and how they handle the awkward questions in the clarification round.

Silence on accessibility and security. Both have legal weight for a membership body. If WCAG 2.2 AA and a data processing agreement are requirements, put them in the brief, not in the contract after award. See our note on what to ask an agency about security before you sign.

The template

Copy the headings below into your own document. The notes under each one tell you what suppliers are looking for.

1. About the organisation (half a page)

Who you are, how many members, what kinds of membership exist, and the one-line reason the website matters to the organisation this year. If there is a strategy document, link it rather than summarise it.

2. Why now

What is wrong with the current site, in numbers where you have them. Renewal completion rate. Support tickets about the website per month. Time it takes a staff member to publish an event. Accessibility audit findings. Contract end date with the current supplier or host.

3. What members and the public must be able to do

A numbered list. For each item, say whether it exists today and where. Typical entries:

• Join online, with the right membership grade and fee applied
• Renew online and update their details
• Log in with the same credentials as the member portal or CPD system
• Find and book events, including member and non-member pricing
• Search a member directory, with privacy controls
• Access resources restricted by membership grade
• Receive email from the organisation that reflects their preferences

4. Systems the website must talk to

A table: system name, what it does, version, whether it has a supported API, who the vendor contact is, and whether you have the right to let a third party connect to it. Include the CRM or membership system, finance, events, learning, email and any single sign-on.

5. Content

How many pages, documents and media items exist. Which must be migrated as they are, which will be rewritten, and who is writing. Whether there are archives that must stay at their current web addresses for search and citation reasons.

6. Platform preferences

If you have a view on the CMS, say so and say why. If you do not, say that and ask suppliers to recommend one with reasons. Our own guide to Umbraco or WordPress for a professional body sets out how we make that call.

7. Non-functional requirements

Accessibility standard (WCAG 2.2 AA is the current expectation), performance targets, hosting region, backup and recovery expectations, security certifications you require of the supplier, and the data processing terms you will need signed.

8. Team and ways of working

Who the supplier will work with on your side, how often you can meet, and who signs things off. Whether you want a named account manager and direct access to the developers. How you want to receive progress reports.

9. Budget and timeline

A range for the build. A separate range or expectation for ongoing support. The date the site must be live and anything that fixes it, such as a conference or a renewal cycle.

10. How to respond and how you will score

Format, length limit, deadline, clarification process. Scoring weights across relevant experience, proposed team, approach, price and the clarification round. Whether references will be taken and when.

What happens after the brief

A good supplier will come back with questions, not just a proposal. Expect to spend an hour in a clarification call with each shortlisted supplier. The ones who ask about your membership system’s API and your renewal process in that call are the ones who have built this before.

Once a supplier is appointed, the first phase of the work is usually discovery: interviews with your membership, events and communications leads, a look inside the systems, and a costed plan. We describe how that runs and what it costs on our How we work page, and what we build for membership organisations specifically.

If you would rather talk the brief through before you issue it, that is a fifteen-minute call. We will tell you what is missing and whether we are the right people to bid.