Federal Grant Programs

Notice of Intent to Post an RFQ for a Grants Processing Application

The Executive Office of Education (EOE) and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) intend to post a Request for Quote (RFQ) for the procurement of a comprehensive Grants Processing Application (solution). This solution must be able to support the programmatic and fiscal management for all grants processed at DESE. This includes all activities relating to grant processing from the funding opportunity setup through closeout. Specifically, this includes the fiscal setup, applications, approval, payments, amendments, and ongoing administration of education grants for DESE. This year DESE anticipates administering over 7,000 grants and currently maintains a userbase of 2,000+ unique applicant profiles, 3,578 external users, 101 internal users, and 2 internal administrators.

The high-level processes to be included in the future-state Grants Processing Application include the ability to:

• Onboard and maintain users and associated user profile information
• Set up new grant funding opportunities, including creating grant applications with varied functionality
• Collect, approve, and track progress of grant applications through both internal and external dashboards
• Make amendments to existing approved grants
• Collect, approve and batch payment requests
• Integrate with Commonwealth payment systems for the pay out of grant funds
• Monitor grant fiscal activities
• Collect Final Financial Reports, return of grant funds and grant closeout process
• Deliver business intelligence for business stakeholders

DESE is seeking a Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud-based solution that is capable of delivering best practices in the grants processing industry. The system should be configurable to accommodate DESE processes and business rules, and also be capable of being integrated with other key EOE applications.

Bidders should have experience delivering their proposed solutions and be able to propose a proven delivery methodology complete with both internal and external change management and communications, as well as an implementation approach that minimizes disruption to the field of users.

The estimated Posting date is within 2–4 weeks. There will be a Q&A opportunity at a later date. No further information is available at this time.

Any vendor with a grants processing solution that did not receive this notification but would like to receive a copy of the RFQ posting notification, should register for a CommBuys account that includes the commodity code(s) for software. Instructions can be found here: Job Aid: COMMBUYS Vendor Registration .

Any market vendor that is not already on the ITS75 Vendor List must submit a bid in cooperation with a current ITS75 Reseller. This is achieved by (1) registering for a Commbuys account as set forth above, and (2) including a Reseller Letter and Reseller quote with the market vendor's proposal. Further instructions will be provided in the RFQ when posted.

EOE strongly encourages market vendors with potential solutions to begin discussions and establish contractual relationships with ITS75 Resellers as soon as possible. The list of ITS75 Resellers is below, in alphabetical order. Market vendors can reach out to more than one Reseller to explore potential relationships, and Resellers can support the bid proposals of more than one market vendor. This process takes time and starting the process now will improve any Bidders' ability to meet the RFQ response deadline.

The estimated RFQ posting date is within 2–4 weeks. No further information is available at this time and EOE will not respond to vendor questions. There will be a Q&A opportunity at a later date. EOE will respond to questions at that time.

Please feel free to share this information and thank you for your interest!