Consultant Opportunity: Finance and HR Systems Assessment
March 12, 2026
Request for Information
Educate Maine
Finance and HR Systems Assessment and Selection
Summary
Educate Maine is a nonprofit organization that advances education policies and practices that prepare Maine students to be the next generation of productive, engaged citizens. In recent years, our budget and staff size have nearly tripled while the internal tools have not kept pace with our growth.
Through this initiative, we seek to strategically modernize our finance and human resources systems to create an integrated, scalable, and efficient infrastructure that can support our current needs and continued growth. To ensure we select the most effective solutions for our needs and implement them successfully, we are seeking to engage an external consulting organization with expertise in nonprofit finance and HR technology.
This RFI is for information-gathering only and is not a request for full proposals. Responses will help inform our strategy and next steps, which may include a formal Request for Proposals.
We anticipate conducting a separate selection process at a later date to engage an implementation partner.
Timeline
- RFI Release: March 11, 2026
- Response Deadline: March 27, 2026
- Finalist Selection: April 3, 2026
- Project Kickoff: No later than May 11, 2026
- Project Completion Date: June 30, 2026
Project Description
The key goals of this project include:
- Review of current finance and HR systems and workflows
- Organizational needs assessment and system requirement identification
- Evaluation of potential software solutions
- Developing system evaluation criteria and a selection framework
- Developing criteria to review implementation approach, whether through the system vendor or by a 3rd party
- Draft budget estimates for the system implementation and ongoing operation
Who We Hope to Work With
- Firms/consultants that work with small nonprofits to identify and select tools and systems to improve efficiency, compliance, and reporting while remaining cost-effective.
- A vendor that has significant experience with financial and HR tools and systems.
- As a nonprofit focused on education, we eagerly welcome responses from vendors who represent the diversity of Maine’s young and growing population.
- We anticipate conducting most work for this project virtually. Firms with the ability to meet in person in Portland, Maine on occasion are welcome but not required.
- We expect to work with a single firm who can provide all of the services included in this RFI.
What to Submit
To understand who’s interested in this project, we ask that you provide some basic information about your firm and the answers to a few questions in a Letter of Interest. The questions are brief, to allow you to answer in less time and us to review quickly. Letters of Interest should be no more than 3 pages, excluding links and optional team bios.
Please provide the following information:
- Summary of your background for the project. In a few paragraphs, how can your specific skills and experience lead you to a successful solution for this project?
- Briefly describe how you typically guide a small or mid-sized nonprofit through selecting finance and HR systems. What key steps are involved in your process?
- Three case studies particularly relevant to our project, which include a sense of the process that you used to complete the work, and make it clear which parts you (as opposed to a different vendor) were responsible for. This should include experience working with small or mid-sized nonprofit organizations undergoing growth or operational scaling.
- A link to your website.
- Team bios. A link or separate attachment to view short bios of your leadership team.
- Where in the country/world your team is primarily based.
Budget
Educate Maine has not established a budget for this project at this time. Budget and scope for both the initial assessment and developing estimates and scopes for the implementation itself will be discussed with firms selected for follow-up conversations.
Please send Letters of Interest to James Murphy at james@educatemaine.org by Friday, March 27, 2026. Reasonable questions will be answered, with answers shared via a Q&A format on our website. No phone calls please.
Q&A
No questions submitted at this time
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