RFPFree
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For advisory firms

A fair process, sealed until the deadline

RFPFree is where nonprofit institutions run structured advisor searches. If a committee invited your firm, here is exactly what happens next — and what never happens.

  1. 01

    You're invited by name

    There is no public board and no open bidding. An organization's committee builds its own shortlist and sends your firm a private invitation link. If you received one, someone on that committee specifically wanted to hear from you.

  2. 02

    You answer structured questions once

    Every RFP on the platform asks the same fifteen core questions in identical wording — fee schedule, minimums, AUM, team, custody, performance methodology, conflicts, regulatory history, references — plus a short block of custom questions specific to that organization. Typed fields where answers are comparable, prose only where prose belongs.

  3. 03

    Your submission is sealed

    The organization cannot read your response — answers or attachments — until the response deadline passes, checked against server time. Answering early costs you nothing, and no competitor's response is visible to anyone before yours.

  4. 04

    You're compared on substance, with citations

    After the deadline, the committee sees responses side by side. Every figure in that grid links to the exact answer it came from. Fee arithmetic runs in code at the organization's actual asset level. Nothing scores you, ranks you, or recommends against you.

Frequently asked questions

What does it cost my firm to respond?
Nothing. Responding to an RFP is free for advisory firms, and free for the organizations running the search. There is no charge to accept an invitation, submit a response, or attach documents.
How does RFPFree make money, then?
The long-term model is paid workflow tools for advisory firms — tools that make responding easier. What is deliberately off the table: nothing an advisor could ever pay for will buy placement, visibility, or advantage inside any organization's search. The comparison layer treats every firm identically whether or not it ever pays for anything.
How do I get invited to searches?
Invitations come from the organizations themselves. Committees build their own shortlists — there is no directory to join, no profile to optimize, and no way to pay for exposure. The best route to an invitation is the same as it has always been: being the kind of firm a committee wants to hear from.
Can I see who else was invited?
No. You cannot see which other firms were invited or what they submitted, at any point. They cannot see you either.
Why can't I see the organization's name on some RFPs?
Organizations can run an anonymous search — you see the entity type, asset band, and mandate, but not the name. The identifying fields are excluded from the query itself, not hidden in the interface. The organization is revealed to finalists at its own discretion, outside the platform.
Does an AI score or rank my response?
No, and this is a design commitment, not a limitation. AI helps organizations draft their RFP and helps normalize fee schedules into a comparable structure, but every number is computed in code and every extracted value carries a citation to your exact answer. Any output that ranked firms or suggested a choice would be a defect.
What happens to my fee schedule?
Your tiered schedule is normalized into a structured shape — breakpoints, minimums, inclusions — and effective annual cost is computed at the organization's asset level, in code. The committee sees the arithmetic and the crossover points, with your original wording one click away.
Can I save a draft and finish later?
Yes. Responses can be saved and resumed until you submit, and you can attach supporting documents — ADV brochures, performance composites, team bios — alongside your answers.
What does the organization see about my firm before the deadline?
Only that your firm accepted the invitation. The content of your submission — every answer and every attachment — is unreadable by the organization until the response deadline passes. This is enforced in the data layer and checked against server time.
Is my response used to train AI models?
No. Submissions are used to run the search you were invited to — normalized, cited, and compared for that committee. They are not training data and are not shared outside that search.

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