How to find website design RFPs

Where to find web design RFPs for agencies comes down to a few public places. Federal website, design, and marketing notices are posted on SAM.gov. Cities and counties use their own procurement portals. School districts and public universities post on a campus purchasing page, and sometimes on a city or state system as well.

AgencyBids reads three feeds: SAM.gov, the NYC City Record dataset, and the LA County open-bid RSS. It does not crawl every state portal or any school site. Counts below come from the listings stored in this project.

SAM.gov

SAM.gov is the federal contract system. This project calls the Opportunities API at https://api.sam.gov/opportunities/v2/search. It does not scrape sam.gov HTML. A stored federal listing links to sam.gov/opp/{notice id}/view.

Each run searches two codes: 541511 every time, plus one of 541810, 541430, 541613, 512110. The extra code changes with the UTC day and with whether the run is before or after 18:00 UTC. Two weekday runs stay near four searches. This repo notes that a non-federal key can be limited to about 10 requests a day. Awards, inactive notices, and past deadlines are dropped before anything is stored.

541511 is what these notes call custom programming. It is kept only when the title or description matches a keyword. The other four codes can assign a category on their own. One ncode value cannot carry five codes: a five-code search returned HTTP 200 with totalRecords 0.

State and city procurement portals

Local website work is often posted only on a state, county, or city purchasing site. This site reads two of those feeds, then groups notices by place of performance on the states hub.

New York City publishes Current Solicitations on NYC Open Data, dataset 3khw-qi8f: NYC Open Data current solicitations. The request keeps rows that are still due and whose title or first description contains: website design, website redesign, web design, web development, digital marketing, social media, video production, graphic design, brand identity, branding, search engine, section 508. The words "website" and "accessibility" alone are not requested, because they show up in lines such as "download the file from the agency website." Links point at the open-data row.

Los Angeles County publishes open solicitations as RSS: the LA County open bid feed. The job reads that one document and does not open bid pages. Commodity text uses the same keyword rules. Links stay on camisvr.co.la.ca.us.

For any other government, open its bids page and search website, web design, graphic design, and digital marketing. Then check the states hub for notices already stored here.

Schools and universities

K-12 districts, community colleges, and state universities usually post on their own purchasing page. Open the current solicitations list on that page. Some also use a city portal, a state portal, or SAM.gov.

This site does not crawl campus pages. A school or university notice appears here only when one of the three feeds already returned it. One stored notice is "DIGITAL MARKETING SERVICES" from City University on NYC City Record. That is a row from an existing feed, not a separate campus crawler.

Filter with the NAICS codes this site uses

Federal notices often include a six-digit NAICS code. NYC and LA County rows stored here often do not, so keywords keep those.

These codes map to a category even when the title is vague:

519130: Web design
541613, 541810, 541820, 541830, 541840, 541850, 541860, 541870, 541890, 541910: Digital marketing
512110, 512191: Video production
541430: Branding

541511 is searched every SAM.gov run and is not in that map, so the code alone is not enough. SEO and accessibility have no code here. They match SEO, search engine optimization, accessibility, Section 508, and WCAG. Search one code at a time.

The web design category matches: web design, website design, website, web site, web development, website redesign, site redesign, user experience, ux design, landing page. In a description, these words are ignored: website, web site, accessibility, and logo. They still count in a title, so boilerplate is not treated as a website project.

Qualify a bid quickly

Read the official notice before you write. Summaries on this site are short and AI-assisted. The source link sets the scope, the deadline, and the rules.

Check the due date first, including questions due sooner. The fit score adds 10 when the deadline is at least 14 days out. The homepage marks a notice due soon when it is due within 14 days. A continuous county row can be stored with no date. A blank date does not mean you may respond later.

A website redesign with a scope is one project. An as-needed pool for graphic design, website design, and photography is a vendor list. As-needed notices in the stored list: DBH77c, DBH77b, and DBH77a from Beaches and Harbors (LA County bids).

The fit score runs from 1 to 100 and starts at 35. A strong title adds 25 (terms: web design, website, digital marketing, video production, branding, brand identity, graphic design, seo, search engine, accessibility, section 508, and wcag). A mapped NAICS code adds 20, and 541511 does not. A second category adds 10. A due date at least 14 days away adds 10. It is a hint, not a recommendation to bid.

Price is shown only when the notice publishes a number. None of the notices in the stored list publish a contract amount, so no dollar total is shown. Do not read a blank as zero. Sources sought is market research. A request for proposals is the document that asks for an offer. Place, set-asides, and insurance are in the official notice, not in the score.

Red flags

Spec work is a notice that asks for a design, a prototype, or a campaign concept before award, and lets the buyer use that work without pay. Samples of past work are normal. Producing the project for free is not.

Unrealistic timelines show up when a full public site, a content move, and training are due inside the 14-day window this site calls due soon. Compare the scope with the days left before you write.

Matching is literal. A title with "animation" can land in video when the buyer wants software, not a film. Skip it when the official notice is not a site, a brand, a campaign, or a video for an audience. "Download it from the agency website" is the same kind of false lead, which is why descriptions skip website, web site, accessibility, and logo.

Use the lists on this site

Open the web design category for website, UX, and public-site notices. The stored list has 7 notices, 3 in web design, across 4 states. By source: 2 from SAM.gov, 1 from NYC City Record, and 4 from LA County bids. The states hub groups them by place. The categories hub also lists marketing, video, brand, search, and accessibility.

The free digest is one email a week after you confirm. Web design is included with the other categories. Browsing stays free. The form on this page joins that digest.