Background
The Eshelman Institute for Innovation (the “Eshelman Institute”) was founded in 2014 by a $100M gift from Dr. Fred Eshelman with the aim to fund high-risk, potentially high-reward research ideas from among faculty and staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Since its inception, the Eshelman Institute has given over $28M in grants, funding 148 projects and leading to 28 patent applications and 13 startup companies. Over the past year, the Eshelman Institute has been reevaluating and redeveloping our strategic plan, choosing to focus primarily on oncology and neuroscience projects, largely in therapeutics but also in digital health solutions. At the same time, the Eshelman Institute has broadened its scope from working with only Eshelman School of Pharmacy researchers to include all health science researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A need that has arisen from expanding to all of UNC is to build awareness around campus of who the Eshelman Institute is and what the Eshelman Institute does. This need leads us to seek professional marketing help.
Purpose
Furthermore, the Eshelman Institute seeks to raise its profile outside of UNC, with the aim of attracting attention from donors/philanthropists seeking to partner in funding research projects, as well as pharmaceutical companies with whom the Eshelman Institute can out-license the intellectual property (IP) it helps to develop. The ultimate aim of working with these two broad audiences is to ensure long-term sustainability of the Eshelman Institute. The Eshelman Institute is now soliciting proposals from qualified vendors with whom we can partner to raise our brand awareness and further develop our brand position and character. The awarded vendor shall have demonstrated success in marketing, website design/support, managing social media content, public relations, branding strategies and meet all of the requirements and specifications of this RFP.
Closing Date
January 24, 2021 by 2:00 PM ET
Address
Direct all inquiries concerning this RFP to:
Contract Lead: Veronica Green
Email: veronica.green@unc.edu
All proposal responses shall be submitted electronically via the North Carolina Business Invitation Delivery System (NC BIDS). For additional information, the NC BIDS for Vendors page includes online training videos and a link to NC BIDS FAQs for Vendors.