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Request for Proposals Open: Maintenance, Support, and Ongoing Strategic Site Development for CreativeGround.org

New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) seeks proposals from consultants to serve as a technical partner in providing ongoing maintenance, support, and, as needed, strategic feature enhancements to CreativeGround.org, its primary tool for and service of its Creative Economy program.  

Timeline 

Request for Proposals Open: June 11, 2025 

Proposal Deadline: July 3, 2025 

Contract Start Date: September/October 2025 

Contract term: 12 months (with intent for annual renewal) 

CreativeGround Background 

CreativeGround.org is a signature component of NEFA’s creative economy portfolio and connects, promotes, and provides data about New England’s creative economy. The only regional digital directory of its kind, the site was launched in its original form in 2014 and has continually evolved to serve the creative communities of New England, including a major site rebuild and redesign launched in 2022.   

Free and searchable to all users, the site features over 30,000 in-depth profiles for cultural nonprofits, creative businesses, and artists of all disciplines. Site users learn about the creative assets in their own community, search for collaborators and resources, and promote their creative work to a broad audience. The site also serves as a data source for research about the creative economy in New England for NEFA and for key organizational partners throughout the region. CreativeGround reflects ongoing, real-time, and participatory tracking of the creative people and places of New England and is built upon NEFA’s 40-year legacy of commissioned research on the economic impact of the region’s creative sector. 

NEFA’s studies on the makeup and the strength of the region’s creative sector, including The Jobs in New England’s Creative Economy and Why They Matter, demonstrate that the creative sector can be invisible and challenging to support because it is embedded within all other economic sectors. The steady decline of payroll jobs in the creative economy has made finding and supporting the growing number of self-employed creatives especially necessary. In the early 2000s, NEFA made an intentional investment in online tools to quantify and spotlight the New England arts sector and for artists to find resources without going through a private authority or curator with the launch of the CultureCount and MatchBook.org websites. In 2014, NEFA combined these websites into CreativeGround as one free, searchable, online creative community with the goal of building both the capacity of the creative sector, and the capacity to study it.  

Five years after the site’s initial 2014 launch, NEFA’s Creative Economy program undertook a planning process that included implementing a robust new technical plan for the CreativeGround platform. The rebuild of CreativeGround resulted in a completely re-designed React front end, including a reimagined search tool and an accessible and mobile-responsive user interface, a new technical structure for the back-end site using a decoupled/headless Drupal architecture, a two-way data sync with NEFA’s Salesforce for enhanced data management and cleaning tools, and an open API that can be used by partner cultural organizations across the region. Since launching this new iteration of CreativeGround in 2022, NEFA has continued to not just maintain the platform, but to continually invest in features to expand its use a data hub for cultural communities, positioning NEFA as the backbone data provider for the arts and culture sector in the region. 

A project of NEFA, CreativeGround is funded through ongoing partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts and the six New England State Arts Agencies (Connecticut Office of the Arts, Maine Arts Commission, Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council). 

Tech Vendor Responsibilities

Provide Site Maintenance and Support:

  • Identify and implement regular Drupal updates as needed
  • Identify and implement front-end (React) updates as needed
  • Identify and address critical site security updates
  • Address and solve bugs and technical issues reported by the NEFA team
  • Maintain the customized integrations of Drupal site data with NEFA Salesforce and Mailchimp platforms
  • Maintain a rigorous process for testing and deployment of updates, with a focus on regression testing and accessibility impacts of all new work 

Partner on Additional Site Improvements and Project Work as Needed:

  • Serve as a strategic partner with NEFA’s Creative Economy team on planning and prioritizing continuous platform improvements that are responsive to CreativeGround partner and end user needs
  • Make technical updates to site content, forms, and data as request by NEFA team
  • Create detailed and right-sized project scopes/proposals for improvements to site functionality and new feature development (may entail 1-2 one-off projects per year, in response to program initiatives and end user needs)
  • Create accessible, mobile friendly and cohesive UX/design options when front end improvements are requested
  • Utilize data from CreativeGround web analytics tools in site development planning 

Lead with strong project management practices, including bringing established systems for: 

  • Creating shared documentation
  • Prioritizing technical work, triaging new requests, and managing the backlog
  • Budget estimation, tracking, and management
  • Scoping new features and projects with clear shared goals, schedules, and budgets 

Desired Skills and Expertise of Consultant 

Technical Expertise and Competencies: 

  • Deep knowledge of the challenges and opportunities of a searchable digital platform
  • Drupal 10 expertise; strong knowledge of Drupal as a project/open-source community
  • React front end development
  • Headless/decoupled CMS
  • Building and maintaining systems/data integrations; a plus if experience with the following Drupal integrations:
  • Salesforce (two-way sync, using Drupal module, with customizations)
  • Mailchimp (using Drupal module, with customizations)
  • Building, maintaining, and working with JSON APIs
  • OpenSolr Search
  • UX/design for organization, specifically of complex information & creating clear UX for complex, searchable structured data
  • Expertise in web accessibility best practices; a practice of integrating accessible and mobile-responsive design into all feature development and site changes
  • Building sites for Search Engine Optimization and discoverability 

 Operational Practices and Approach: 

  • Nonprofit-centric in your operations with a track record of working with non-profit clients; willing to work with NEFA team on right-sized solutions, budgets, and scopes with long-term sustainability as a guidestar
  • Well-defined internal project management and planning practices
  • Ability to seamlessly manage both ongoing maintenance work and project-based initiatives
  • Have a defined process for scoping new initiatives
  • Strong practice of product/feature documentation
  • Eager to understand the product purpose (user stories, stakeholder groups) and to be a true thought partner on developing feature solutions around end-user needs
  • Facility with strategizing for increased equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in tech
  • An attitude of collaboration, openness, and flexibility
  • Strong track record of organizing multiple stakeholders and delivering materials according to budget and timeline of contracts
  • A plus: familiarity with the New England creative sector and other CreativeGround site audiences 

Proposal Requirements 

  1. A summary of your approach to maintenance and support work, as well as an outline of your typical approach to project planning
  2. Support rate structure & sample support contract, including terms of ownership and liability
  3. Completion of this brief self-assessment of your areas of technical expertise
  4. Design samples (sites with searchable directory component preferred)
  5. References (preferably from projects involving a complex search feature) 

Please direct questions and submit complete proposals to NEFA’s CreativeGround team, via email at creativeground@nefa.org. Dee Schneidman, Senior Program Director for Creative Economy, is the primary point of contact for this contract, with additional support from Natalya Tausanovitch, Creative Economy Program Manager. Dee is available to respond to questions until June 27. Reserve time with Dee. 

Terms and Conditions 

By no means does the RFP process imply any agreement or contractual obligation. The RFP only serves to gauge interest for the project by respective firms. Costs involved in preliminary activities will not be reimbursed by NEFA.  

About NEFA 

The New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) invests in artists and communities and fosters equitable access to the arts, enriching the cultural landscape in New England and the nation. See www.nefa.org/about_us/history_mission for more about NEFA’s vision, values, and funding. 

See www.nefa.org/creative-economy for more information about NEFA’s creative economy work, including CreativeGround.