Business Outreach and Education Fund

The City of Seattle is seeking proposals for Business Outreach and Education Fund . Proposals are due no later than 11:00 pm on Thursday, January 23, 2025 . All questions are to be submitted through the Question & Answer portal no later than 12:00 am on Friday, January 17, 2025 .

Business Outreach and Education Fund

The City of Seattle is a national leader in establishing equity through its labor standards. Currently, there are 19 such labor standards which establish minimum working conditions for Seattle’s workers; this RFP is requesting outreach and education on 16 of the 19 ordinances. For successful implementation, businesses must be aware of, and understand, their responsibilities required by these laws. Small businesses are a critical component in achieving equity and it is important to the City that businesses are equipped with the information and educational resources they need to be successful. We also understand that many small businesses struggle to comply with these laws because of lack of access to this information. This is especially true for business communities with linguistic, cultural, social, economic, and geographic barriers to compliance. The Business Outreach and Education Fund emphasizes support to these targeted business communities to achieve racially and socially equitable labor standards implementation by contracting with business organizations to conduct outreach and education to these communities .

The fund seeks to establish collaborative relationships with business organizations to:

• Increase knowledge of and compliance with Seattle’s labor standards among the small business community to build a “culture of compliance” in Seattle
• Develop new partnerships among community organizations serving the business community and increase the capacity of such organizations to serve as ongoing resources for information and compliance assistance with Seattle’s labor standards
• Foster increased collaboration between OLS and the business community and build trust for OLS and business organizations as trusted resources for information and compliance assistance
• Create opportunities to expand on OLS’ work with relevant City of Seattle departments with direct ties to the business community, such as Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Office of Economic Development, Finance and Administrative Services to promote business support and sustained compliance with Seattle’s labor standards