This is a guide to running a website tender, written by a supplier who responds to them. That means you are reading advice from the other side of the table, which is exactly why it is useful. We know which tenders attract good agencies, and which ones quietly put them off. A well-run tender gets you better bids, from better suppliers, with less work on your side.
First, whether you need one at all. Below roughly £10,000, a tender costs more in staff time than it protects. Get three quotes and compare them properly. Above that, or wherever your financial procedures require competitive procurement, a structured tender is worth doing well.
Publish a real budget range
The single biggest improvement you can make, and the one most tenders skip. Charities often withhold the budget hoping for a pleasant surprise. What actually happens is this. Suppliers who would fit your budget do not bid, because they cannot tell if you have £15,000 or £80,000. And the proposals you do receive are scattered across a range so wide they cannot be compared.
State a range at the expression-of-interest stage and ask bidders to confirm they can work within it. You will lose the fantasy of an underpriced bid and gain a set of proposals you can genuinely score against each other. Ask suppliers to show build, hosting, and ongoing support as separate figures. A low build price with expensive mandatory support is a common shape worth seeing clearly. And ask whether the supplier charges VAT, because most charities cannot reclaim it. A £20,000 quote plus VAT is £24,000. A £22,000 quote from a non-VAT-registered supplier is £22,000. Comparing headline figures without checking hides a fifth of the cost.
Describe what you have, not just what you want
The strongest tender document we have responded to included a content inventory. How many pages, how many posts, how many documents in the resource library, which donation forms, which integrations. Suppliers could price the migration instead of guessing at it, and guessing is what makes quotes pad upwards.
You can build this inventory in an afternoon. Export a list of pages from your CMS, or ask whoever manages the site for the sitemap. Note the things that carry risk. Donor data, event bookings, anything connected to a CRM or payment provider, and who currently controls the domain and hosting. If you do not know that last one, run our website ownership audit before you tender. Discovering mid-project that nobody can access the DNS is a delay every supplier has lived through.
Set a timetable with real gaps in it
A workable sequence, used by well-run charity tenders we have seen:
- Expression of interest: two to three weeks for suppliers to confirm interest and indicative pricing
- Full specification issued to interested suppliers
- A clarification window, with questions and answers anonymised and shared with every bidder
- Three to four weeks for proposals
- Shortlist presentations, then decision, with dates published in advance
The clarification window matters more than it looks. Sharing all answers with all bidders keeps the competition fair and stops your inbox filling with variations of the same question. And the two-week proposal turnaround some tenders demand does not create urgency. It filters out suppliers with existing clients, which is to say the ones you want.
Score everything with the same panel
Decide your criteria before proposals arrive. Publish them in the tender document with weightings, and have the same people score every submission. It sounds procedural. It is also the difference between choosing a supplier and choosing the presentation your loudest trustee liked. Criteria that work: relevant charity experience, approach to migration and accessibility, the team who will actually do the work, ongoing support arrangements, and price. Ask bidders to declare any conflicts of interest, connections to staff or trustees, and to provide charity references you may actually contact.
What puts good suppliers off
Since you have a supplier at the table: these are the things that make experienced agencies close the tab. No budget indication. Scope described entirely in adjectives ("modern, engaging, dynamic") with no inventory. A required proposal format that takes days to produce before any shortlisting. Ownership of the current site unknown. Evaluation criteria absent, suggesting the decision will be made on chemistry. None of these mean your project is bad. They mean your tender is making it look risky, and risk gets priced in or walked away from.
If you want to see what real charity tenders look like, several are public. Article 39's website tender is a good example from a small charity, and Find a Tender lists larger ones. Borrow their structure and skip their length.
The short version
State a budget range. Inventory what you have. Leave real time between stages. Share every answer with every bidder. Score with published criteria and one panel. Do those five things and your tender will be better run than most we see, including some from organisations 50 times your size.
Goodside responds to charity tenders and RFPs. The Rebuild package page explains how we handle itemised pricing, references, and conflict declarations. If you are preparing a tender and want a supplier's eye over the draft before it goes out, book a free 20-minute call. We will tell you what is missing, whether or not we end up bidding.
