Stanford
Center on Early Childhood

RAPID Survey Project Community Voices Partnership

Request for Proposals - Closed April 19, 2024

The RFP closed April 19, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. We are no longer accepting proposals.

Background

The RAPID Survey Project is a program of family and early care and education workforce surveys led by a team at the Stanford Center on Early Childhood. RAPID surveys are designed to gather essential information in an ongoing manner regarding the experiences, needs, well-being, and resiliency of children under age 6 and the important adults in their lives. RAPID’s goal is to provide actionable, timely data to inform policies, programs, and other efforts to support young children and their caregivers and families. 

Since the first survey in April 2020, RAPID has heard from more than 20,000 households with young children and more than 6,000 members of the early care and education workforce across the U.S. RAPID maintains high response rates, communicates data findings and provides relevant resources directly to participants each month, and continuously adds new participants.

In 2022, RAPID launched Community Voices, an initiative to collaborate with local organizations and local governmental leaders to implement place-based surveys. The purposes of Community Voices are to: 1) promote parent- and data-informed programs, advocacy, and policymaking, and 2) build the capacity of community and state-based organizations to efficiently and effectively gather and act on parent voices and data. Community Voices surveys are both aligned with the goals of the RAPID Survey Project and co-designed with our partners to meet specific local data needs. Community Voices partners include nonprofits representing a community, city, county, and state and municipal organizations. All Community Voices partners share a demand for actionable, timely data and insights on the experiences of families and young children in their community and an interest in centering parent voices and experiences in the design of policies, programs, and services that are intended to support them. 

The RAPID team has been implementing Community Voices with its first cohort of community partners. With this Request for Proposals (RFP), RAPID is seeking applicants to be considered for a second Community Voices cohort from July 2024-June 2026. 

The Opportunity

RAPID will partner with up to five local organizations/teams to conduct Community Voices surveys. Each local project team and the Stanford RAPID team will work together in a rapid-cycle process to design surveys, recruit participants, gather responses, interpret the resulting data, and ultimately take action on the data. 

With support from RAPID as helpful, Community Voices partners determine:

  • Survey frequency (e.g., quarterly, or fewer). 
  • Survey content. Partners gain access to all current RAPID survey questions, including questions in our focus areas: Material hardship, parent emotional well-being, child emotional well-being, child care, and preventive health care.
  • Number of participants (i.e., desired sample size).
  • Languages in which to administer the survey. RAPID always administers surveys in English and Spanish.
  • Recruitment strategies, leveraging community-based organizations that are trusted by parents and families.
  • How to communicate about the RAPID partnership and data findings, and when and how to use and share the data and parent voices.

Stanford Responsibilities 

RAPID will assign a Stanford team member with experience partnering with local organizations to liaise with the research team and work alongside the local team. The person in this role will provide resources to facilitate the design activities outlined above. Additionally, the RAPID team will provide the following support:

  • Advise on survey questions and design.
  • Build and administer the surveys.
  • Translate the surveys into other languages, as needed.
  • Support the local team’s recruitment strategies and provide data on response and engagement.
  • Collect, process, and analyze data.
  • Send gift cards to compensate parents for their time.
  • Communicate with parents by sharing results and resources.
  • Provide data files.

More information about RAPID’s approach and methods can be found here. 

All Community Voice partners can also join the RAPID Community Learning Network, a space in which they can connect directly with one another to exchange information about survey implementation, discuss data findings, and share ideas, lessons learned, and support.

The Stanford Center on Early Childhood will cover RAPID staff time, as well as the resources needed to complete all of the research activities above. In addition, SCEC will cover all gift cards to participants for each survey they complete. 

Partner Responsibilities

Organizations chosen to be Community Voices partners will convene a local project team and cover the costs of staff time and resources necessary to participate in survey design, recruit participants, and act on the data resulting from the surveys. Costs to local organizations are expected to vary on a case-by-case basis. For example, it has been helpful to some of our Community Voices partners to provide stipends to community-based organizations that support parent recruitment, to offset the costs associated with their staff’s time, printing flyers, or other expenses, while others have existing arrangements with partnering organizations in their communities. Additionally, local project teams will vary, in terms of the size of the team, roles represented on the team, and how responsibilities are distributed among team members. In all cases, it’s been helpful for our partners to have a designated project manager who is able to devote a minimum of two hours per week to the initiative. 

A key to the success of a Community Voices collaboration is a strong team, including an agreed upon project manager and decision maker from the community. The project manager will convene the local project team, be present in regular check in meetings with the Stanford  RAPID team, and work with their Stanford RAPID counterpart to ensure all project milestones are attended to. The decision maker will serve as the sponsor or champion for this initiative among other partnering organizations in the community, and will have the authority to provide and/or facilitate all necessary decision making. Some of RAPID’s Community Voices partners have found it helpful for one person to fill both the project manager and the decision maker roles, while others have had different people in each role. The organization that this person is/people are employed by will serve as the lead organization representing the community in this partnership. 

The RFP closed April 19, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time. We are no longer accepting proposals.

If your organization is interested in being in the second cohort of RAPID Community Voices, please send a response to the following questions in Word document or PDF. The recommended response length is 5 pages. 

  1. What is the name of the community you will represent in this project?
  2. Briefly describe the lead organization and its work on behalf of young children, parents, and families. Please specify the community the organization serves (city, county, region, etc.) and the nature of its work.
  3. Please tell us who will be the project manager and decision maker from your community? What role does this person or people play in your organization? Why are they the best choice to lead this initiative? Alternatively, how would you propose to structure your project team in a way that works for your community?
  4. How will your organization aim to recruit parents of young children to take the survey? If you will rely on partnerships with other organizations in your community, please describe how your team will build or leverage those partnerships. 
  5. How would a Community Voices initiative support your community and your organization in its mission to serve young children, parents, and families? 
  6. What are your initial thoughts on how the data and parent voices could be used in your community? 
  7. Please share some past examples of successes and challenges in incorporating parents and parent voices in your organization’s work (e.g., community advisory groups, needs assessments)?

Next Steps

RAPID will be holding up to two optional information sessions about this RFP and Community Voices. These information sessions are intended to support potential applicants. Both sessions will be virtual and held on Zoom. You can register to attend here:

  • Session 1: Thursday, April 4 from 11am-12pm PDT. 
  • Session 2: Monday, April 8 from 9-10am PDT. 

We aim to inform you of the decision about your response by May 20, 2024. Before that date, we may contact the primary applicant listed in the RFP for additional information. 

Thank you for your interest in RAPID! 

Key Dates

  • March 20 | RFP Launches
  • April 4 | Information Session 1
  • April 8 | Information Session 2 
  • April 19 | RFP Closes
  • April 20-May 17 | Review and selection process underway
  • May 20-27 | Selected communities notified
  • July 1 | Launch Community Voices Cohort 2