Asso­ci­a­tion Website RFP Check­list⁠: What to Ask Every Vendor

Before a REALTOR® association picks a website or CMS partner, it should ask about ten things: who owns the content, what staff can change without the vendor, how members sign in, where the directory data comes from, how events and education get onto the site, accessibility, cookie consent, scale, migration, and support after launch. The checklist below turns each one into questions you can paste into an RFP, plus what a good answer sounds like.

We build and run association sites on TaliCMS, our own platform, for Texas REALTORS®, Columbus REALTORS® and the Abilene Association of REALTORS®. So read this knowing we're one of the vendors you might send it to. Every question here is one we'd want you to ask us.

Why generic RFP templates miss the hard parts

Most website RFP templates are written for any non-profit. They ask detailed questions about page templates and colour palettes, and nothing about member logins, NRDS-linked directories or MLS listings. Those are exactly the places where association projects go wrong.

What we've seen across our association builds is that no two sites are the same shape. Texas REALTORS® runs a member platform with no property search at all. Columbus REALTORS® and Abilene both run live listings. The member sign-in is different at every site that has one. A vendor who answers your RFP with a single standard feature list hasn't noticed that yet.

So the questions below are less about "do you have feature X" and more about "show me how it works for an association like ours".

The checklist

1. Content ownership and leaving

• Who owns the content, the design and the domain once the site is live?
• Can we export all our content (pages, news, documents, images) in a usable format, and how?
• If we leave, what happens to the site, and how much notice do we need to give?
• Is the platform something another vendor could take over, or only you?

A good answer is specific and unbothered. You're not planning to leave. You're checking whether the relationship depends on you being stuck.

2. Staff self-service

• Show us the admin, not the public site. Walk through publishing a news item and changing a page.
• What can our communications team change without contacting you? What still needs a ticket?
• Can staff schedule content, like an alert banner, to appear and disappear on its own?
• Can staff add a third-party widget (a form, a video, a search tool) to a page themselves?
• Can staff reset their own admin password?
• Is there a draft and preview step, and can preview links be shared for sign-off?

What we've seen: the test that matters most is "what are they waiting on us for?". At Columbus REALTORS® we built scheduled alert banners, an HTML embed block and self-serve password resets into the CMS for exactly that reason. Each one removed a reason for staff to email a developer. A vendor should be able to name the things their clients still wait on them for.

3. Member sign-in

• How will members-only content be gated?
• Will members need a new username and password, or can they use a login they already have?
• What does a visitor see when they click something members-only?

A good answer starts with "which login do your members already use?". At Texas REALTORS®, members sign in with their existing NAR login. At Abilene, members-only resources sit behind the MLS login members already have. Nobody got a new password at either. A second login is one of the most common complaints association staff hear, and it's usually a platform decision rather than something you have to live with.

4. Directories

• Where will the Find a REALTOR® directory get its data, and how often does it update?
• Who corrects a wrong listing, and where?
• Can the public filter by things members care about, like languages, designations and specialties?
• Do brokerages and affiliates get their own directories?

A good answer is that the directory stays in sync with your official membership data automatically, so staff never maintain a second copy. We cover this in more depth in our post on member directories later this month.

5. Events and education

• If our events or courses already live in another system, will the site pull them in automatically?
• Can we add one-off events by hand alongside the automatic ones?
• Does registration stay where it is today, or move?

What we've seen: at Columbus REALTORS®, classes, committee meetings and association events appear in one calendar, fed automatically rather than retyped each month. At Texas REALTORS®, the course catalogue stays in step with the association's education system without anyone touching it. If a vendor's plan involves your staff re-entering events, ask why.

6. Accessibility

• What standard do you build against? (The answer should name WCAG 2.2 AA.)
• How do you test it: automated checks, manual keyboard and screen reader passes, or both?
• What stops accessibility slipping backwards after launch, when staff are publishing?
• How do you handle PDFs, which are often the least accessible content on an association site?

7. Privacy and cookie consent

• Do analytics and third-party embeds (listing search, video, maps) wait for consent?
• Does the site honour the Global Privacy Control signal from a visitor's browser?
• What happens to analytics cookies if a visitor changes their mind?

What we've seen: both Texas REALTORS® sites and the Abilene site honour Global Privacy Control, and analytics and embedded content wait for cookie consent. Embeds are the part vendors miss, because staff add them over time. We'll cover this properly in a later post in this series.

8. Hosting, speed and scale

• What's the largest association you run today, by members and by content?
• How does the site behave on the pages that do the most work, like the directory, listings and search?
• Who's responsible for performance after launch?

A good answer names a real site at your scale or bigger. Texas REALTORS® is one of the largest REALTOR® associations in the country. In their words:

"Our new site on TaliCMS has handled the scale of a state association without missing a beat. Dazlab worked closely with our team through the build and launch, and the result is a site that's faster and much easier for our staff to keep current." — Angela Brutsche, CAE, RCE, Vice President of Communications & Marketing, Texas REALTORS®

9. Migration

• Will you crawl and archive our current site before launch?
• Will you give us the old-to-new URL map to review before cutover?
• How do you handle documents, magazine or news archives, and the forms library?
• What do you check in launch week, and for how long after?

What we've seen: at Abilene we crawled and archived the entire existing site before cutover, mapped every old address to its new home, then re-crawled after launch and checked every link and asset. Texas REALTORS® moved off WordPress with a full redirect map, so old links keep working. We'll go through the method in the next post.

10. Support after launch

• When staff get stuck, where do they go first?
• Is help available inside the admin, or only by email?
• Who do we talk to, and how quickly do they answer?
• How are new features and changes decided after launch?

What we've seen: both the Columbus REALTORS® and Abilene admins have in-app help built in, so staff can search the help guides or get in touch without leaving the page they're editing.

Questions about the vendor, not the software

These four sort experienced vendors from optimistic ones faster than any feature list.

• Which REALTOR® associations have you built for? Names and links.
• Can we speak to two of them?
• What's the most common reason your projects run late?
• What on our list will be difficult for you?

The last one matters. A vendor who says yes to everything hasn't understood the requirement. One who tells you which part will be awkward has probably done it before.

How to weigh the answers

We'd weight the answers roughly like this, because it matches where association projects succeed or fail:

Design isn't on the list. That's not because it doesn't matter. Every vendor on your shortlist can produce an attractive site. Far fewer can hand your staff something they'll keep current.

On timelines

Agencies commonly quote six to nine months for an association site. Columbus REALTORS®, with more than 9,400 members, went live in twelve weeks on TaliCMS. That wasn't because we worked faster. The association-specific parts (directory, events, document library, listings) already existed, so the work was configuration, design, content migration and the feed. You can read more on the Columbus REALTORS® project page.

Ask every vendor what specifically drives their timeline. The honest answer is usually two things: how quickly your team makes decisions, and how long third parties take to grant access to your data.

How we'd answer this checklist

We'd rather you sent this list to us than a vague brief. Our answers come from sites that are live today, not a feature sheet. Where something is a setting, we'll say so. Where it's something we'd build for you, we'll say that too.

If you're comparing vendors more generally, our posts on what to ask before hiring a software studio and what a development contract must include cover the commercial side.

FAQ

What should an association website RFP include?

A short description of your association and why you're replacing the site now, what you run today (website, membership system, MLS, events, sign-in), a must-have / should-have / nice-to-have list, the questions above, your timeline and budget range, and how you'll score responses.

How many vendors should we send our RFP to?

Four to six is a workable number. Include at least one vendor that specialises in associations and one general web agency. The difference in how they answer the member data and migration questions is usually revealing.

Should we share our budget in the RFP?

Yes, as a range. Withholding it doesn't get you a lower price. It gets you proposals aimed at the wrong scope.

What's the most important question to ask a website vendor?

"Show us the admin." Your communications team will spend years in it. If a vendor won't show it before you sign, that tells you what you need to know.

Do we need a vendor that specialises in REALTOR® associations?

Not always, but it lowers the risk. Member sign-in, directories, education feeds and listings are where generic projects overrun, and a specialist has usually solved them already.

If you'd like to see how TaliCMS answers this checklist, start with TaliCMS for associations.