Association for Budgeting and Financial Management
Request for Proposals to Serve as ABFM Secretariat

Deadline: April 10, 2020

Background
The Association for Budgeting and Financial Management (ABFM), a section of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), has established in its bylaws (Article VI, Section 5) the role of Secretariat. ABFM is now accepting proposals from academic institutions interested in serving as the Secretariat.

Expected Activities of the Secretariat
The Secretariat fulfills multiple roles, including secretary, archivist, and operations manager.

The Secretariat is expected to maintain section relationships with ASPA and facilitate the day- to-day operations of ABFM. Specifically, the Secretariat performs the following roles, and the response to this RFP should detail how the host plans to meet these expectations.

• Maintain membership records with ASPA. The Secretariat will work with ABFM’s Membership Chair to monitor membership changes and follow up through emails or other correspondence with new members and those who have dropped their membership.
• Manage the flow of content through ABFM’s website, with particular emphasis on: notifications regarding the annual conference; job postings; highlighting ABFM members’ blogs, Twitter feeds, or other social media content; relevant links to the ABFM newsletter or other relevant association newsletters; other relevant content. Note that the Secretariat is not expected to create content, but rather to facilitate publication on the website content created by ABFM members.
• Maintain a variety of digital document archives housed at ABFM’s website. This includes: syllabi and other teaching materials; all relevant Association documents such as the bylaws, template award and appointment letters, etc.; conference papers; and other relevant documents.
• Perform routine technical maintenance of ABFM’s website. This includes regular updates to security protocols; new site functionality as needed; adding storage capacity and other capacity as needed. If necessary, the host institution should plan to contract with web design/maintenance professionals for these services. If the host institution intends to contract, the RFP response should describe that potential contracting relationship.
• Maintain a list of the current Executive Committee and Committee Chairs. This list should include name, ground mail address, phone numbers (voice and fax) and email addresses.
• Coordinate with the Newsletter Editor to distribute the newsletter electronically. Editing will continue to be done by other ABFM members. The Secretariat must correspond with the Newsletter Editor and the ABFM Chair to make sure that the newsletter is delivered to members in a timely manner, ideally bi-monthly, and especially in the weeks prior to the annual ABFM conference.
• Arrange for the annual elections for new members of ABFM’s Executive Committee and ABFM’s Chair. This requires distributing and processing electronic ballots using the membership list obtained from ASPA.
• Attend and produce minutes of all ABFM Executive Committee meetings, at the annual conference as well those conducted online and/or by telephone or teleconferencing. Produce and archive all meeting minutes electronically, following review by the ABFM Executive Committee.
• Ensure that all members of the Executive Committee are notified of the date and time of each Executive Committee meeting.
• Preserve all records deemed to be important for understanding the history of ABFM, such as conference programs, quarterly newsletters, meeting minutes, and financial records. ABFM’s officers shall determine which records shall be permanently retained and which shall be kept for a specified number of years.
• Provide for the production of plaques for the Wildavsky, Howard, Curro, and Posner awards, and for the outgoing Chair. Have the plaques ready for the annual conference.
• Participate in the meetings of the ABFM Executive Committee and attend the annual ABFM conference. The host institution should name the principal contact person for the duration of this agreement. That contact person is expected to attend each Executive Committee meeting and pay the registration fee to attend the annual ABFM conference.
• Perform other duties as assigned/requested by Chair and/or the Executive Committee. In each of the above expectations, the RFP response should be clear on the extent of the host’s commitment (e.g., financial and staff resources).

Time Period
The response to this RFP should indicate the commitment to enter into an agreement for the host site to serve as the ABFM Secretariat for a period of three years, with renewals subject to a new RFP. The parties to the agreement can expand the terms upon mutual agreement.

Financial Commitment
The RFP response should indicate how the host will provide administrative resources to handle these responsibilities, such as through the allocation of a portion of the time of full time administrative staff, graduate assistants, and/or faculty. The person in charge of the Secretariat should be named and a complete set of contact information should be provided. Administrative costs of the Secretariat should be shared by the host and ABFM as negotiated in response to this RFP.

Response Timetable
Institutions responding to this RFP must do so by April 10, 2020 and in a PDF submitted to ABFM’s Immediate past Chair, Justin Marlowe (jmarlowe@uw.edu). Please direct any questions regarding this RFP to Justin Marlowe.