When governments and organizations distribute large sums of public money, the stakes for getting procurement right couldn't be higher. The National Association of Counties (NACo) has developed a set of guiding principles for creating competitive Request for Proposal (RFP) processes specifically designed for opioid settlement funds — money flowing to counties across the United States as part of landmark legal settlements with pharmaceutical companies and distributors.
While the context is public health funding, the principles NACo outlines are universally applicable. Whether you're a procurement professional managing vendor selection for a government agency, a nonprofit administrator overseeing grant disbursements, or a business owner structuring your first formal RFP, the lessons embedded in this framework are worth understanding deeply.
This article breaks down those principles, translates them into actionable procurement best practices, and shows you how to apply them to your own RFP processes — regardless of industry.
Why Opioid Settlement RFPs Offer a Masterclass in Procurement
The opioid crisis has resulted in billions of dollars being distributed to state and local governments. These funds come with enormous responsibility: they must be spent on evidence-based, community-centered programs that actually reduce harm. That means the procurement process for selecting vendors, service providers, and program administrators must be rigorous, transparent, and defensible.
This isn't just about compliance. It's about outcomes.
When public trust, public health, and public money are all on the line simultaneously, procurement professionals are forced to build processes that are airtight. The principles NACo recommends for opioid settlement fund RFPs reflect years of public procurement experience distilled into a framework that prioritizes accountability, equity, and effectiveness.
That's exactly why these principles translate so well to general procurement best practices.
Principle 1: Define the Purpose and Outcomes Before Writing a Single Line
One of the most common mistakes in RFP creation is jumping straight into the document before clearly articulating what success looks like. NACo's guidance emphasizes that counties must first establish the specific goals of opioid settlement spending — whether that's expanding treatment access, supporting recovery housing, or funding prevention education — before inviting proposals.
What This Means for Your RFP Process
Before you open a template or start listing vendor requirements, ask yourself:
- What problem are we solving? Be specific. "Improving IT infrastructure" is not a problem statement. "Reducing system downtime that causes a 15% productivity loss in our operations team" is.
- What does success look like in 6, 12, and 24 months? Vendors need to understand not just what you want them to do, but what you want them to achieve.
- Who are the stakeholders, and what do they need? In the opioid context, this means community members, health departments, and county commissioners. In a corporate context, it might mean end users, department heads, and finance teams.
When your RFP is anchored in clear outcomes, vendors can write proposals that actually address your needs — rather than generic pitches that check surface-level boxes.
Principle 2: Build Transparency Into Every Stage of the Process
NACo's framework stresses that the RFP process for settlement funds must be transparent from start to finish. This includes publishing clear evaluation criteria, disclosing conflicts of interest, and documenting every decision made during vendor selection.
Transparency isn't just an ethical imperative — it's a practical one. Transparent processes reduce the risk of legal challenges, build vendor confidence in the fairness of the process, and create institutional knowledge that improves future procurements.
Practical Steps to Build Transparency Into Your RFP
Publish your evaluation criteria upfront. Don't keep scoring rubrics secret. When vendors know how they'll be evaluated — and with what weighting — they can submit more targeted, relevant proposals. This saves everyone time and improves the quality of responses you receive.
Create a structured Q&A period. Allow vendors to submit questions during a defined window, and publish all questions and answers to all prospective vendors simultaneously. This levels the playing field and prevents any single vendor from gaining an informational advantage.
Document your decision-making. Keep detailed records of how proposals were scored, who participated in evaluations, and why the winning vendor was selected. This documentation protects your organization and demonstrates due diligence.
Disclose conflicts of interest. Any evaluator with a personal or financial relationship to a vendor should recuse themselves. Make this policy explicit in your RFP process documentation.
Principle 3: Use Competitive Bidding to Drive Quality and Value
The entire point of a competitive RFP process is to create meaningful competition among qualified vendors. NACo emphasizes that counties should avoid sole-source awards for opioid settlement funds whenever possible, and that the process should genuinely invite multiple qualified respondents.
This principle might seem obvious, but in practice, many organizations inadvertently undermine competition by writing overly narrow specifications, setting unrealistic timelines, or failing to market the opportunity broadly enough.
How to Maximize Meaningful Competition
Write specifications that describe the problem, not the solution. If your RFP is so prescriptive that only one vendor could possibly meet every requirement, you've already eliminated competition before it starts. Describe what you need accomplished, and give vendors the latitude to propose innovative approaches.
Set realistic timelines. A 10-day response window for a complex, multi-year services contract will deter serious vendors and favor those who already have a boilerplate response ready. Give vendors enough time to write thoughtful, customized proposals.
Actively market your RFP. Don't just post it on your website and hope the right vendors find it. Distribute it through industry associations, professional networks, and procurement portals. For opioid settlement funds, NACo recommends outreach to community-based organizations, behavioral health providers, and peer support networks that might not typically respond to government RFPs.
Consider pre-proposal conferences. An optional informational session for prospective vendors can clarify requirements, answer questions in real time, and encourage participation from organizations that might otherwise self-select out.
Principle 4: Prioritize Evidence-Based Criteria in Your Evaluation Framework
For opioid settlement funds, NACo is explicit: funding should flow to programs and interventions with demonstrated effectiveness. This means evaluation criteria should include evidence of past outcomes, not just organizational capacity or price.
This principle has profound implications for how RFPs are scored and how vendors are selected.
Designing an Evidence-Based Evaluation Framework
Move beyond price as the primary criterion. Lowest-cost procurement is rarely best-value procurement. Your evaluation criteria should balance cost against demonstrated outcomes, organizational capacity, cultural competency, and sustainability.
Ask for case studies and outcome data. Rather than generic descriptions of services, require vendors to provide specific examples of programs they've implemented, populations they've served, and measurable results they've achieved.
Weight criteria according to your priorities. If community trust and cultural relevance are critical to your program's success — as they often are in public health contexts — those criteria should carry significant weight in your scoring rubric.
Consider a two-stage evaluation. Many sophisticated procurement processes use a two-stage approach: first evaluating technical qualifications and approach, then evaluating price only among technically qualified vendors. This prevents cost from distorting the evaluation of program quality.
Tools like CreateYourRFP can help you structure evaluation frameworks systematically, ensuring that your scoring criteria are aligned with your stated outcomes before you publish the RFP. Having that alignment baked in from the start prevents the common problem of evaluation criteria that don't actually measure what matters most.
Principle 5: Center Equity and Community Voice in the Process
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of NACo's guidance is its emphasis on equity. Opioid settlement funds should reach communities that have been most affected by the crisis — and that means the RFP process itself must be designed to avoid inadvertently excluding community-based organizations, small nonprofits, and minority-serving institutions.
This is where many standard procurement processes fall short, and it's worth examining carefully.
Designing More Equitable RFP Processes
Simplify the application process. Complex, lengthy RFP responses requiring specialized grant-writing expertise effectively exclude smaller organizations that may be doing the most important community-level work. Consider tiered funding levels with proportionally simpler applications for smaller grants.
Offer technical assistance. Some counties have created pre-application workshops or one-on-one consultation opportunities to help smaller organizations understand the RFP requirements and prepare competitive proposals.
Review your requirements for inadvertent barriers. Do you require a minimum number of years in operation? A minimum annual budget? Specific certifications? Each of these requirements may be legitimate, but each also potentially excludes organizations with genuine capability. Review them critically.
Diversify your outreach. Reach out through channels that community-based organizations actually use — community centers, faith institutions, social media groups, and trusted local intermediaries — rather than relying solely on formal procurement portals.
In corporate procurement contexts, equity considerations might translate to supplier diversity programs, small business set-asides, or intentional outreach to minority-owned and women-owned enterprises.
Principle 6: Build In Accountability Mechanisms From the Start
NACo's framework doesn't end at contract award. It emphasizes that accountability mechanisms — performance metrics, reporting requirements, and monitoring processes — should be built into the RFP and contract from the very beginning.
This is a critical insight that many procurement processes overlook. The RFP is not just a vendor selection tool. It's the foundation of a performance management relationship.
Embedding Accountability Into Your RFP
Define key performance indicators in the RFP itself. Don't wait until contract negotiation to discuss how performance will be measured. Vendors should know, before they submit proposals, exactly how their work will be evaluated and what reporting they'll be required to provide.
Require a performance management plan. Ask vendors to describe, in their proposals, how they will track outcomes, manage quality, and course-correct if performance falls short. This tells you a great deal about organizational maturity and commitment to results.
Build in milestone reviews. Multi-year contracts should include formal performance reviews at regular intervals, with clear consequences for underperformance and clear pathways for contract modification or termination if necessary.
Plan for data collection. If your program depends on outcome data — and for opioid settlement funds, it absolutely does — make sure your RFP requires vendors to collect and report that data in compatible formats. Data silos undermine accountability.
Principle 7: Learn and Iterate
The final principle implicit in NACo's guidance is perhaps the most important for long-term procurement excellence: treat every RFP process as a learning opportunity.
The opioid crisis is evolving. Community needs are changing. Evidence about effective interventions is growing. A procurement process that was appropriate three years ago may not be appropriate today.
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement in Procurement
Conduct post-award debriefs. Meet with both successful and unsuccessful vendors to understand what worked well in the process and what could be improved. Unsuccessful vendors often provide the most candid feedback.
Track outcomes over time. Did the vendors you selected actually deliver the outcomes you hoped for? If not, what does that tell you about how you evaluated proposals? Use this information to refine your evaluation criteria.
Stay current with best practices. Organizations like NACo, the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIGP), and the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) regularly publish updated guidance on procurement best practices. Make continuing education a priority.
Document your institutional knowledge. Every RFP process generates insights. Capture them in process documentation, lessons-learned reports, and updated templates so that future procurements benefit from past experience.
Bringing It All Together: From Principles to Practice
The NACo framework for opioid settlement fund RFPs offers a compelling model because it was forged under conditions of high stakes and high scrutiny. When you're distributing public money to address a public health crisis, you can't afford to get procurement wrong.
But the truth is, you can't afford to get procurement wrong in any context. Poor vendor selection wastes resources, damages relationships, and undermines organizational goals. A well-designed RFP process — one built on clear outcomes, genuine competition, evidence-based evaluation, equity, and accountability — is one of the most valuable investments any organization can make.
If you're building or refining your RFP process, consider using CreateYourRFP, an AI-powered RFP generator that helps you structure competitive, comprehensive RFPs aligned with procurement best practices. Whether you're managing public health funding, technology procurement, professional services, or construction contracts, having a well-structured starting point can dramatically improve the quality of your process and the proposals you receive.
The principles that guide responsible opioid settlement spending — transparency, competition, evidence, equity, and accountability — are the same principles that should guide every RFP you write. Start there, and you'll be ahead of most.
Key Takeaways for Procurement Professionals
- Define outcomes first. Know what success looks like before you write a single requirement.
- Build transparency in. Publish criteria, share Q&As, and document decisions.
- Create genuine competition. Write specifications that invite innovation, not just familiar vendors.
- Evaluate on evidence. Price matters, but outcomes matter more.
- Design for equity. Remove inadvertent barriers that exclude qualified but smaller vendors.
- Embed accountability. Performance metrics belong in the RFP, not just the contract.
- Learn and iterate. Every process is an opportunity to improve the next one.
The best procurement professionals don't just run RFP processes — they continuously refine them. The NACo opioid settlement guidance is a reminder that the highest standards of procurement practice aren't reserved for high-profile public funding. They're the standard every organization should aspire to.