Career services request for information
March 19, 2009
Introduction
Mapping Your Future is a public-service, nonprofit organization providing career, college, financial aid, and money management information and services to students, their families, and schools.
Mapping Your Future's vision is to be the leading public-service, collaborative provider of free information and services for schools, and for students and families as they consider college, financial aid, careers, and financial literacy options. Our mission is to enable individuals to achieve life-long success by empowering schools, students, and families with free, web-based career, college, financial aid, and financial literacy information and services.
Mapping Your Future is sponsored by student loan guaranty agencies – all of which are nonprofit organizations or state agencies – from around the country. We are supported by other organizations including charitable foundations and by members of our Friends program, which include lenders, services, secondary markets, and other organizations.
Mapping Your Future has served millions of students and families and thousands of schools in the United States and around the world:
- More than 3,500 postsecondary schools use Mapping Your Future’s Online Student Loan Counseling, which allows them to meet federal loan counseling requirements and help borrowers understand education loan obligations.
- More than 51,000 people have played Mapping Your Future’s Show Me the Future®, an online life skills and money management game. The game premiered on March 31, 2006.
- More than 3,300 guidance counselors, educators, and other early awareness and college preparation professionals subscribe to Mapping Your Future’s Early Awareness E-News, a monthly newsletter.
In addition to those who use the specific services mentioned above, millions of visitors come to Mapping Your Future every year to use the other information and resources on the website.
Goals
Mapping Your Future is interested in expanding its career services. We are most interested in the following:
- Assessment tools
- Career interest matching
- College matching
- Financial aid matching
- Scholarship matching
- Portfolio capabilities (store applicant information, assessments, etc. for future use)
Mapping Your Future’s Current Career Services
Mapping Your Future currently offers the following career information pages:
- Assess your skills and interest
- Develop a career plan (with sample plan)
- Find work
- Write an effective resume
- Get ready for interviews
- Review other career guidance and job search resources
Mapping Your Future also offers CareerShip®, it’s online career exploration tool, primarily targeted to middle and high school students (but available for use by all. CareerShip uses O*NET Career Exploration Tools.
Using CareerShip, which is available in both English and Spanish, students can review careers by cluster, review the featured career, match careers to their interests, or search for a particular career. For each career, students have access to a variety of information:
- Tasks
- Wages
- Career outlook
- Interests
- Education
- Knowledge
- Skills
- Similar careers
Guidelines and Requirements
This request for information (RFI) is an open and competitive process. All responses must be received by 5 p.m. Central on April 9, 2009 to be considered.
Brevity will be appreciated. Your response should include, at a minimum, the following:
- Define your services, including the features, benefits, and uniqueness of each. Include the target audience for each service, as well as multi-lingual capabilities. Describe how your customers access and use your services
- Define your market presence (market share, customers served)
- Describe the nature and extent of customer support for your services.
- Define how Mapping Your Future might collaborate with your firm.
- Indicate whether your organization would be interested in a cooperative partnership with Mapping Your Future. The relationship could include an arrangement or exchange of services between your organization and Mapping Your Future. Creative proposals that help students and schools will be considered.
- List the organizations or companies with whom your firm has worked. Briefly list the role your firm played in each project.
- Describe your experience in working with nonprofit and/or public-service organizations.
- Provide current reference information for three former or current clients.
- Briefly describe your firm’s organizational capacity to provide career planning services (e.g., staff, equipment, software, physical space, office location, etc.).
- Provide a company profile, length of time in business, and core competencies.
- Briefly describe the percentage of your staff that would work on career services, relative to your entire staff (using full-time equivalents).
- Provide an estimated time frame for implementing the services you suggest, as well as your methodology to determine said time frame.
- Detail your pricing, providing a complete list and explanation of all fees.
Send your completed response to projectmanager@mappingyourfuture.org.
Process
Once the Mapping Your Future staff has reviewed the RFIs, it will determine if it will move ahead with expanding its career services. It may choose an agency from the RFIs received, though if necessary, it will send a request for proposal or request for best and final offer.
Evaluation of Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated with the following criteria:
- Suitability and innovativeness of the services – the proposed solution meets or exceeds the needs and criteria set forth in the RFI
- Innovativeness and creativity of partnership opportunities
- Expertise and commitment, as evidenced by the proposal and references
- Proposal presentation – The information is presented in a clear, logical manner and is well organized
- Value/pricing structure and price levels – The price is commensurate with the value offered by the proposer
Timeline
- This RFI is dated March 19, 2009.
- Proposals are due no later than 5 p.m. Central on April 9, 2009.
- Proposals will be evaluated thereafter.
- Please include an estimate of the completion date for this project.
Questions about the RFI
If you have questions about this RFI, contact Mapping Your Future's project manager at projectmanager@mappingyourfuture.org.