Childrens Organization Issues RFP Seeking New Website
SAL Family and Community Services is now seeking bids for a comprehensive website upgrade and redesign project. The agency, serving nearly 15,000 people in the greater Quad Cities and Peoria, Illinois areas, has a wide online presence and a growing need for a more future-forward, mobile-responsive, customer-focused set of websites. SALFCS envisions websites that match design with functionality, allow the user to easily access information and engage in a variety of multimedia forms, while providing an intuitive path to travel throughout the site to learn new information and access resources and tools.
Families and child care professionals visit SALFCS’ websites every day to learn about enrolling their children in high-quality early care and education, to find information and register for upcoming trainings in early childhood development, to stay updated on early care and education trends, to find employment opportunities, and to communicate with our staff for a multitude of reasons. SALFCS strives to be forward-thinking, innovative, and sophisticated in the options available for online communication with customers, and with a fresh, new website design with improved functionality children, families, and individuals in the community will seek out our information and services as a leader and expert in the community.
Agency Overview
Mission:
SAL Family and Community Services strengthens children, families, and individuals to build and enhance thriving communities.
The Home Child Care Network
The Home Child Care Network (HCCN) works to support families needing non-traditional hours of child care (1st, 2nd, 3rd shifts, weekends, holidays) so children in a licensed home child care setting receive the same high-quality care as children in a center-based setting. HCCN offers free consultation and support to licensed home child care providers in 12 counties in Illinois, from the Quad Cities to Peoria. HCCN Coordinators provide curriculum, CPR/First Aid training, professional development opportunities, assistance with the ExceleRate Illinois quality rating system process, and one-on-one coaching on a variety of early childhood education topics.
Open Door
Open Door, a crisis assistance program funded by the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), offers a ‘hand up’ to individuals and families in crisis. The program is located next door to the Rock Island Skip-a-Long campus and serves Henry, Mercer, and Rock Island counties, and a second office in Peoria’s SAL Child Care Connection building serves Peoria and the surrounding counties. Open Door has an on-site food pantry, clothing, and Coordinators work to connect community resources such as counseling, health services, employment, and housing to meet each person’s immediate needs.
Websites’ Audiences
The agency currently operates five websites. Skip-a-Long Child Development Services – www.skip-a- long.org, the main agency website – www.salfcs.org, SAL Child Care Connection – www.salccc.org, the Provider Connection (a site for SAL Child Care Connection child care centers and homes) – www.providerconnection.org, and the CCRR website – www.childcareillinois.org. Home Child Care Network and Open Door websites are currently embedded in the Skip-a-Long website and are underutilized.
Skip-a-Long Child Development Services
The primary audience of this website is currently enrolled families at the Skip-a-Long centers. Families have smartphones or tablets, primarily, and use the website to check their child’s weekly menu, calendar of site events, pay their child care bill, or read the monthly campus newsletter. The secondary audience is potential families who are interested in early care and education for their children ages six weeks to 12 years old. Families live in and around the Quad Cities area and have incomes ranging from low/middle to moderate/high.
SAL Family and Community Services’ main website
The audience for this site is primarily potential or current volunteers, donors, and community members such as foundations and fellow social service organizations. The site houses overview information on each of the agency’s programs as well as agency history and organizational information, and directs visitors to individual program websites.
SAL Child Care Connection
This site is used by families in a nine-county area surrounding Peoria, Illinois to search for high-quality child care, apply for the Child Care Assistance Program (IDHS funding for child care), and learn about why high-quality child care is important. The second and equally important audience is child care providers in the nine-county area. Child care professionals use the site to search for available trainings, register and pay for trainings, access curriculum and other resources housed as PDFs, and learn about and apply for grant funding opportunities. The associated site – www.providerconnection.org – allows child care providers to securely submit simple inquiries online about families receiving Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) funding, such as parent co-payments, dates of eligibility, status of applications, etc.
Scope of Work
New Websites Objectives
- Provide a mobile-responsive, stylish, and functional experience for the end user
- Allow for increased engagement on site and improved online capabilities (e.g. online forms, access to resources/trainings, etc.)
- Simplify current sites to include only most user-focused content and functions; remove unused pages and out-of-date information
- Provide accurate and easily accessible information to families enrolled or wishing to enroll at the Skip-a-Long centers
- Streamline back office experience across sites for easier functionality and updating of content by SALFCS’ employees
- Allow for expansion/updating if future needs change
New Websites Essentials
The following includes, but is not limited to, website requirements essential to maintain customer relations, improve user access, and provide a positive user experience. This list is not exhaustive but solutions to address the following must be included in the proposal for the bid to be considered:
- Design must be consistent or complementary across sites to improve brand
- be able to access all aspects of back office of sites in order to perform troubleshooting or updating that has a short (less than 24 hours) turnaround time
Proposal due by September 30th, 2016 to:
SAL Family and Community Services
Attn: Liz Dierolf, Director of Community Engagement 4800 60th Street
Moline, IL 61265
