What Kinds of Proposals Are There?

Like many professional documents, proposals come in a few different versions that are written to meet the needs of different rhetorical situations. Those differences in those situations are usually the result of two factors:

• Was the proposal requested?
• Who is the proposal going to?

The first of those questions establishes the difference between a proposal that was asked for (also called a solicited proposal) and one that was not asked for (an unsolicited proposal.) Both are fairly common and similar in many ways, but with a few key differences.

The major difference between the two is where the idea for the proposal – or the determination of the need for one – comes from. With a solicited proposal, an organization or group recognizes their own need for a solution to a problem or a vendor to fulfill a contract. Once that need is realized, the company requests proposals (creating a Request For Proposals or RFP) from other organizations or individuals who might be qualified to do the work.

Academic and research conferences are a good example of a solicited proposal situation. A few months before the conference is to be held, the organizers will send out an RFP to many affiliated organizations or individuals to solicit presentation proposals. The RFP will outline the requirements for the presentations, so that anyone choosing to submit a proposal will know what they’re being asked for:

• the date(s) of the conference
• the length of individual or group presentation sessions
• the theme of the conference or the specific topics that will be covered
• the technical expectations for presentations

That information will be used as a guide by anyone choosing to submit a proposal. The organizers will review and ‘score’ the proposals, deciding which best meet the requirements and will therefore be asked to present at the conference.

The opposite of that is the proposal that isn’t asked for, the unsolicited proposal. In the solicited version, the company/organizers recognized that there was a need for them to ask. There’s no such recognition in the unsolicited situation. Here, the person or group writing the proposal sees that there is a need or that an opportunity exists and creates the proposal on their own. While that shows a significant amount of initiative, you can probably imagine how difficult it can be to get such a proposal approved. In terms of the need to be persuasive and convincing, the unsolicited proposal is a much heavier lift.

The second question – who is the proposal going to – is a matter of internal vs. external. If the writer is a part of the company/organization that’s requesting/receiving the proposal, then it is an internal proposal. If they’re not a part of the company/organization, then it’s an external proposal.

Simple enough, right?

The major differences between internal and external proposals usually show up within the organization of the document. An internal proposal often doesn’t require the writer to provide as much context and explanatory information as an external proposal does. If both writer and audience are in the same organization, they already have a shared ‘vocabulary’ and understand the culture and the environment of the company. Since a lot of these kinds of proposals will be tied to improving some aspect of the shared situation, they’re often written as that other common internal document: the memo.

But if the writer and the audience are not both members of the same company/organization, then the proposal requires more context and more explanation. Most external proposals are submitted as a response to an RFP which requires them to be more formal – including a cover letter – and to have more supporting evidence or documentation.

Think of it this way – if someone from outside your ‘inner circle’ was trying to tell you how to do things in your life, wouldn’t you want them to have a way more convincing argument than your best friend? Professional proposals work in much the same way.