By bobgeier on

As a member of this association, I am passing the following along to the community. It would be nice to see a Drupal site built here, and is a great fit for an OG implementation. Please ignore the unrealistic deadlines; like all NFP Associations, they're a bit slow in getting this sort of thing out.

BG

CALL FOR PROPOSALS / TECHNOLOGY VENDORS AND SERVICES

Description of Call:
The National Association for Research in Science Teaching is seeking a company to provide support to members to expand its current web services. For consideration, vendors are invited to submit proposals prior to October 14th, 2010. Applicant finalists will be expected to present a live web conference presentation of their services to the organization's Executive Board in November 2010. The entire review process will be completed by the end of December 2010.

About the Organization:
The National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) is a worldwide organization of professionals committed to the improvement of science teaching and learning through research. Since its inception in 1928, NARST has promoted research in science education and the communication of knowledge generated by the research. The ultimate goal of NARST is to help all learners achieve science literacy. NARST promotes this goal by: 1) encouraging and supporting the application of diverse research methods and theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines to the investigation of teaching and learning in science; 2) communicating science education research findings to researchers, practitioners, and policy makers; and 3) cooperating with other educational and scientific societies to influence educational policies. NARST currently has approximately 1300 members worldwide and provides services through the website: http://www.narst.org

Current and Proposed Services:
NARST currently supports:

An e-commerce model that collects members' fees as well as annual conference registrations and subscription to their journal, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Website which documents the organization's general information, announcements, policies, and upcoming conferences and events.
Member databases for voting, information sharing, and committee announcements. Documents are shared with the members through pdf and hyperlinks.
Submission and review of proposals for the annual conference occur each year. Individual coordinators manage proposals and reviews through a secured online system. Each year over 500 proposals are submitted, reviewed by three anonymous reviewers each, and authors are contacted via email. The proposals are submitted in August and the conference program and proceedings are posted online every January.
Future services that NARST would like to see offered to its Board and individual members include:

Ability to manage website content, including frequent news updates to the homepage.
Collaborative spaces hosted for projects and discussions including RSS feeds, blog, and wiki spaces.
Conference events as well as occasional streaming of live events during the year. These include archived spaces for video feeds, discussions, documents and podcasts.
Board / Committee secured workspaces including calender / conference call / minutes / voting / document edit and upload / and archives
Member contribution feedback, proposed projects, and current discussions related to annual events and connected directly to the narst.org homepage.
The ability to browse and filter members according to geographic region, research interests, and other attributes.
Website and member services need to have seamless integration of with conference submission site.
Database/archive of research instruments and associated manuscripts, events, projects, and accomplishments which can be compiled by the membership to a central location and meta-tagged for later identification.
Tech support consisting of assigned personnel who are committed to understanding and representing NARST and its values.

How to Apply:
Proposals should include the following components:

Information about your company, including a company profile, mission, and statement of fiscal health;
Specific examples of clients served effectively who are similar to NARST in terms of the size of the association and requested technology solutions; include three formal references that we can contact;
Description of your products and services, including hosting, implementation (design and development, migration of current website), training, tech support, and maintenance;
Description of how your products and services align with the technology solutions requested by NARST; provide links to examples of specific websites, streamed media, organizational database management, collaborative workspaces, and other interactive Web 2.0 functionality proposed for our membership;
Description of how your company handles security solutions for data being hosted, as well as solutions for protected workspaces; and
Budget for the technology solutions requested with associated costs; provide a breakdown of fees for specific services requested.

Additional Questions:

Are you exclusive of any particular platforms?
Would any of your proposed solutions utilize other free services (e.g., Delicious, Blogspot, Wall Wisher)? How open is your company to collaborating with other companies to manage a variety of services (e.g., member database and conference registration with website services)?
Deadlines:
We are aiming for an implementation for the next fiscal year. With the trial period over the course of the Fall of 2010 we anticipate the need for proposals to be submitted by October 14, 2010. Proposals will be reviewed and finalists will be notified within 4 weeks. Finalists will be expected to conduct a live demonstration of proposed services for the Board in late October 2010. Subsequent to the Fall Board meeting the NARST Board will select a vendor within 2 weeks.

Proposals Submitted: October 14th, 2010
Finalists Notified: Early November, 2010
Finalist Board Presentation: Late November, 2010
Final Selection: December 30th, 2010

For more information contact:

Randy Yerrick
ryerrick@buffalo.edu

OR

Dana Zeidler
zeidler@usf.edu

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x, Drupal 7.x