Prioritize Evidence: Getting Started

How to Get Started

1. Assess your prior award history. Examine the types of organizations that have received grants or contracts, the criteria or points allocations used in making the decisions, and the outreach approach used to get the word out to diverse communities.
2. Determine which procurement or grant you will use as your starting point.
3. Consider the available body of evidence based on the procurement or grant.
   1. Has the work been happening for some time allowing for more data and evidence?

   2. Is there likely to be disaggregated data available based on the scope of prior related work?

   3. Are there a variety of different organizations that deliver the service?

   4. Are there BIPOC-led organizations that are currently involved in the work or is there a gap?

   5. To what degree do you want to diversify providers as well as increase the evidence base?

4. Decide whether requiring evidence or incentivizing evidence is a better fit for your organization and your intervention. Make sure to base this decision on the information collected. For example:

   1. If the concept is well known and there are multiple providers in the space, consider drafting a set of requirements for evidenced-based approaches in your RFP. This can include requiring a certain number or level of past intervention outcomes, such as disaggregated data, requiring the performance of an evaluation, or establishing a minimum portion of the budget for use in collecting, analyzing and evaluating data.

   2. If the concept is more emergent or there is interest in seeing a more diverse set of approaches and/or respondents, consider using preference points to incentivize the use of evidence-based approaches. Keep in mind that the point value should be sufficient for it to be meaningful (e.g., 10-20%) but should not overshadow other key evaluation criteria such as staffing, budget or prior experience.

5. Draft the requirements or preference points and coordinate with your procurement personnel around potential impacts and considerations before finalizing. Download this template for sample language to use.

6. Finalize the RFP, including the requirement or preference points, and hold information sessions for potential respondents to ensure they understand what is expected and the appropriate avenues for questions if needed.

7. Hold training for the evaluators to make sure they are familiar with the new requirements/preference points before initiating their review.