COEF 2024-2025 Request for Proposal

Submit a proposal for the Community Outreach and Education Fund!

Submit here
Scroll down to find submission materials.

For detailed information, please refer to the
2024-2025 Request for Proposals Guidelines

Timeline

The goal of the Labor Standards Community Outreach and Education Fund is to foster collaboration between OLS and the community by providing funds to community-based organizations to develop awareness and understanding of worker rights provided by Seattle's labor standards.  While all workers are at risk for workplace violation, data shows that low-wage workers experience the highest rates of workplace violations. Demographic populations most likely to occupy low-wage jobs and experience workplace violations include women workers, workers of color, immigrant and refugee workers, LGBTQ workers, workers with disabilities, veterans and youth workers.

  The COEF is designed to build a culture of compliance by:

• Increasing worker's knowledge and understanding of the rights provided by Seattle's labor standards through methods that are community centered, culturally relevant and accessible, and language specific
• Expanding workers' access to resources to enforce labor standards and ensure their rights are protected
• Building capacity among community organizations to provide labor standards services and information to a diverse range of workers

To submit a proposal, you must use this form and attach the following documents:

1. Cover Page
2. Application Questions
3. Budget
4. Consultant Questionnaire
5. Consultant Inclusion Plan
6. Proof of legal business name (if applicable)
7. Contract Exceptions (optional)

Information Presentation

RFP Info Session Recording (English)  

RFP Info Session Presentation (Slides) 

Questions and Answers

Question

Is there a limited amount of funding each organization can request? For example, is a limited amount allowed for wages? Or indirect expenses? Is it possible to receive additional funding to expand current OLS projects through hiring additional personnel? Is there a limit to how much organizations should ask for to perform outreach within the community when applying for the Community Outreach and Education Fund?

Answer

Organizations are welcome to request as much funding as they believe is necessary for their project.  If an organization believes that additional staff are required to provide the services proposed in the scopes of work, they are free to request additional funding for those positions.  Please utilize the “budget cover sheet” in the budgeting workbook to note anything you feel is important to the review of the budget overview. Indirect expenses should be reasonable and connected with the programming proposed.

There is no limit to how much you can ask for in terms of outreach costs as long as the budget for the planned activity justifies the expense (for example, 1:1 outreach in the community might have a different "cost" than a group event).  Staff time, materials, and other things you would need to do that type of outreach all go into the cost.

Question

There are references to formatting requirements and page limits in the RFP guidelines; what are they?

Answer

There are no page limits. The evaluation committee will review all submitted materials. It is suggested the organizations keep the answers to their application questions to 10 pages at 12-point font. Most of the documents can either be submitted in the format in which you downloaded them from the website or converted to PDFs. However, the budget document must be submitted as an Excel file. If you choose to submit contract exceptions, you must submit them in a format that shows the changes you made to the template contract – this could be a Word document or a PDF showing track changes. Otherwise, there are no specific formatting requirements for how documents should appear beyond the requirement that you use the template documents we’ve provided.

Question

What translated materials does OLS provide to COEF partners?

Answer

All of our translated materials are available here, separated by language: Languages - LaborStandards | seattle.gov

In general, we do not print and provide these materials to partners. We will occassionally provide some materials on a limited basis depending on our stock of such printed materials and what type of materials they are (e.g. if we have a large order of a booklet that is difficult to print). If you're planning on using OLS generated materials in your own outreach, your budget should incorporate printing costs for those materials.

Question

Is it mandatory for RFP applicants to disclose the names of the other City projects their employees are currently engaged in and the titles of the City officials involved in those projects?

Answer

RFP applicants are required to fill out the City’s Consultant Questionnaire as part of their complete application. The questionnaire asks about employees who are working on other City projects and personal relationships with any City workers involved in the RFP evaluation process. The questionnaire does not require disclosure names of City projects or City officials with whom applicants have been professionally involved. However, this information would still be helpful for us to avoid conflicts on the proposal evaluation committee. This additional information can be emailed to OLS_RFP@seattle.gov.

Question

Do selected community organizations have to provide legal services to workers as well as outreach and engagement?

Answer

Community-based orgs are not required to provide legal services. Organizations could provide legal services as part of their scope of work, but it is in no way required to receive funding.  If an organization has capacity, we ask that they conduct “intakes.” The goal of an intake is to collect information that would be necessary/helpful for OLS to have if the worker files a complaint.

In addition, some of our partner organizations try to help workers resolve their issues with their employers informally by reaching out to the employer on the worker's behalf (but not representing themselves as attorneys in any way).

OLS will provide training on how to do intakes for all of the selected organizations who have intakes in their scope of work.

Question

In describing the population that the organization serves in the application, should applicants input just the population the program proposed would serve, or should they also include who they serve generally?

Answer

Organizations should include the population that their proposed program would serve. However, providing information on who the organization services generally in addition can help show what the organization does, the organization's relationship with particular communities, and how these connections could create inroads with the population targeted by the proposal.

Question

Since organizations are required to submit separate applications under each service strategy they want to apply for, can organizations submit the same background information in multiple applications but change the relevant information (i.e. in the application questions and budget)?

Answer

Organizations can submit the same background information if they change the relevant information that would be different under proposals for different service strategies.

Although each application must contain all of the required documents, organizations can use exact copies of the documents where the relevant information wouldn’t change (for example, the Cover Page, the Proof of Legal Business name, the Consultant Questionnaire, and the Inclusion Plan). The application form will not submit unless the correct number of documents have been attached.

Your budgeting documents and scopes of work should be for the specific service strategy that you are applying for.  For example, if you have one staff member that is spending 50% of their time on service strategy 1 and 50% of their time on service strategy 2, their pay and benefits costs should be reflected as 50% in service strategy 1 budget and 50% in service strategy 2 budget.  Feel free to note any assumptions in your scopes of work or budgeting proposals. 

Question

If organizations are applying for 2 or more service strategies, how does OLS recommend they differentiate between the service strategies when, for example, a specific service strategy will likely overlap with a broad-based service strategy?

Answer

Organizations can speak in the separate applications about how the service strategies might overlap and what they plan on doing with these overlapping workers. However, organizations should have separately defined outreach plans and goals for each service strategy. Each service strategy should be planned to work independently of the other since OLS will be reviewing each proposal separately. It might end up that one proposal is selected but not the other.

If OLS ends up selecting both proposals, the reporting and deliverables (what activities OLS pays for upon their completion) will be separated by service strategy. So in a situation where a worker comes into a general program but ends up getting more specific resources relevant to the worker’s industry, the organization could report that as either general or specific outreach, but not both. OLS and the organization would work to define these separations and “what counts” as what during the contract negotiation process.

Question

How should organizations fill out the WMBE Inclusion Plan document?

Is the inclusion plan used for minority and women-owned businesses whose workers an applicant would conduct outreach to?

Answer

The inclusion plan is a City of Seattle requirement that is worth 10% of the overall application (per City rules).  We ARE NOT looking for data in this document regarding who you plan on doing outreach to or the other non-profit groups that you are collaborating with (if any).

Rather, we are looking for responses that outline how you plan to hire WMBE businesses for any subcontracting needs you have---examples include: women and minority owned printshops for materials or swag, caterers for events, office cleaning services, event planning, interpretation, etc. The subcontractors do not have to be state-certified WMBE businesses, this is a broadly construed category.

Basically, when you’re hiring for-profit entities, how can you incorporate WMBE into that process? Even if you can’t project your subcontracting needs over the course of the contract, you can incorporate WMBE inclusion into your decision-making model for choosing a vendor or subcontractor and share that model with us.

Ultimately, we are looking for your best effort in filling out this document.

 For more info on WMBE, you can review the City’s homepage for WMBE: https://www.seattle.gov/purchasing-and-contracting/social-equity/wmbe#plans  

Question

Does each member of a collaborative need to submit an individual Consultant Questionnaire?

Answer

No, only the “Prime Consultant” (the head of the collaborative) needs to submit a Consultant Questionnaire.

The Prime Consultant should fill out the Consultant Questionnaire for all of the organizations in the collaborative. The “Consultant Information”, “Consultant Billing Contact Person”, “Consultant Registration”, and “Ownership” sections should contain the Prime Consultant’s information. The other sections (“Financial Resources...” through “Business History”) should be filled out with information from every collaborative member. For example, for the first question under “Disputes”, if any member of the collaborative has been a defendant in a court case about payment to subconsultants or contract work performance, the answer would be “Yes”.

Applicants can add a page at the end of the “Consultant Questionnaire” to explain the circumstances of any “Yes” answers.

Question

Does each member of a collaborative need to submit their own contract exceptions?

Answer

The Prime Consultant (head of collaborative) would send in a single document for contract exceptions (crossing things out in the contract or adding information). However, the Scope of Work in the contract would include the work of all the collaborative members.

Question

For Question 2, Part A of the Applicant Questions, is OLS looking for a step-by-step plan for how the organization would implement each type of intake practice?

Answer

The application only requires applicants to answer the question for one of the four intake categories (although applicants are welcome to respond to each type of intake if the organization is set up to do all of these types of intakes).

OLS is looking for applicants to explain how the organization would do the intake and follow through with the worker depending on what the worker wants to do. Does the organization have staff available to conduct intakes and write down the correct information? Does the organization have staff who can help workers resolve their complaints on their own? How would the organization do that? That could be a step-by-step, but it doesn't have to be that detailed. It could be identifying that the organization will have a phone line open for a particular time during the week, or "office hours" where people can come in and discuss complaints. The organization would want to talk about how that would work, what the follow up would look like (e.g., staff would walk the worker through the process of filing the complaint on the OLS website) etc. Another example, for "iv. Referral Intake", if the applicant has relationships with other organizations that support workers with legal issues and knows how to refer them to the other organizations for further assistance, the response would mention that.

OLS also only asks organizations with the capacity to do intakes to conduct them. If your organization would not be able to do any sort of intake, that is something you could note. OLS will also be training partners on how to conduct intakes so that OLS (or other organizations) will have the information needed to pursue action it if it gets to that stage.

Question

Are applicants allowed to have a fiscal sponsor? How should they indicate that on the application?

Answer

Applicants can technically have a fiscal sponsor but by doing so they would automatically be in a collaborative with the fiscal sponsor as the "Prime Consultant" and any other organizations would subcontractors. This is required by the City Finance and Accounting Service who makes our contracting rules.

The "Prime Consultant" would be responsible for submitting invoices and making sure that all of the work that agreed on in the contract gets done. The City would send the Prme Consultant payment and they would pay any subconsultants. OLS and all the consultants would meet for monthly check ins.

The fiscal sponsor would the one contracting with the City as the "Prime Consultant" and while the subconsultants work would be included in the contract, the subconsultant would not be the organization who signs it (the fiscal sponsor would). A fiscal sponsor would need to fill out a Cover Page just like any other organization in a collaborative would. It would also be their information on the "Consultant Questionnaire."

Question

As part of the budget, can applicants create disbursements for partner organizations who would do consulting for them?

Answer

As part of the budget, an applicant could create a disbursement for a partner organization who would consult for a specific purpose or project. The application would want to outline the project and make sure that the budget lines up with the proposal. Both organizations could also apply as a collaborative. In that case, the applicant would still list their work in the budget but separate it and say what they're going to do and be paid for which is different than or in addition to the work the main organization would do itself.  The applicant would also include a cover page with the other consultant’s information.