Not because the work isn’t interesting. Not because the charity doesn’t deserve great digital support. But after years of working exclusively in the third sector, I've come to believe the tender process rarely gives either side what it actually needs.

That’s not a comfortable thing to say publicly. Tendering is deeply embedded in how charities procure services, and there are real reasons for that. But I think it's worth being honest about where it works and where it doesn't.

Why it’s so embedded

Charities operate under financial scrutiny that most organisations don’t face. Trustees have a legal duty to demonstrate value for money. Funders often require competitive procurement as a condition of grant funding. Senior leaders need to show their boards that decisions were made transparently.

Tendering serves those needs. It creates a structured, auditable process. For large infrastructure contracts or commodity purchasing, it does that job well.

Creative and digital work is different. It doesn’t behave like a commodity, and applying a procurement framework designed for one to the other tends to produce frustrating results for everyone.

Where it falls short

A tender asks both sides to commit significant time before either side really knows the other. Charities spend weeks writing briefs, managing the process, reviewing submissions. That work almost always lands on someone already stretched, on top of everything else they’re carrying.

On the agency side, a competitive tender can mean days of unpaid work. Smaller agencies – often the ones best suited to charity work precisely because of their size and focus – are regularly priced out. Not on quality. On capacity to compete.

And when the decision finally gets made, it tends to reward the submission rather than the thing that actually determines whether a project succeeds. Which is whether the relationship works.

I’ve seen good agencies win tenders and deliver disappointing projects. I’ve seen charities go with the lowest price and spend twice the budget managing the consequences. The process didn’t cause those outcomes. But it didn’t prevent them either. It just made the decision feel defensible at the time.

What actually works

The charities I’ve seen get the most from their digital partnerships almost always have one thing in common. They chose their agency through conversation, not competition.

They talked to people directly. Asked awkward questions. Looked at relevant work and pushed on the thinking behind it. Paid attention to how the agency listened, not just what it said. And made a call based on trust and fit rather than scored criteria.

Harder to defend to a trustee board. Better results.

What we do with the time instead

A lot of it goes into the Impact Optimiser – a free website audit we offer to any charity, whether they ever work with us or not. Honest, practical, and theirs to take wherever they choose. We’ve delivered it to hundreds of charities across the UK.

Some goes into pro bono work with smaller organisations who don’t have agency budgets but still need proper digital thinking.

We run free webinars on things that matter to the sector – accessibility, digital inclusion, how to make the web work for the communities charities serve. Our recent session, A Web for All, was a good example of the kind of conversation worth having without a sales agenda attached.

The rest goes into getting to know organisations properly before anything formal starts. A discovery call. A real conversation about where they are, what they’re trying to do, whether we’re the right fit. No pitch. No deck.

A different way to find the right partner

If you’re approaching a digital project and considering a tender, it’s worth asking whether there’s a better way to get to the same place.

Talk to agencies directly. Ask for examples relevant to your challenge, not their highlights reel. Ask how they handle a project that goes off–track. Ask what they’d push back on in your brief. You’ll learn more than any formal submission will tell you.

If your governance requirements make a competitive process unavoidable, try to build in a proper conversation before the tender stage. Test the relationship alongside the capability, not just the document.

And if you’d like to have that conversation with us, it goes without saying, we’d welcome it.

Why we don’t tender