College Recruitment Platform

NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE: AmeriCorps intends to negotiate and award a firm fixed price, sole source procurement for the Handshake College Recruitment Platform to: Handshake The Stryder Corp. 225 Bush St 12 Floor San Francisco, California 94104-4254 The associated North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 518210, which has an annual size standard of $40,000,000. The PSC code is DA10. Interested vendors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) at https://www.sam.gov/portal/public/SAM/. The Office of External Affairs at AmeriCorps seeks to utilize a college recruitment platform to improve recruitment of AmeriCorps members. Use of this tool will allow AmeriCorps to meet its strategic plan objective of recruiting a diverse corps who are representative of the communities we serve. Since a large amount of AmeriCorps members across the network are 18-28 years old, reaching a high volume of current and recently graduated college students is critical to this objective. Through the use of this platform, AmeriCorps will be able to seamlessly communicate with college-aged individuals and promote service opportunities to this group. The objectives of this project are to: 1. Build and manage a member pipeline 2. Raise campus awareness of AmeriCorps programs 3. Decrease time to connect with college students and graduates 4. Expand the number of universities that can be reached 5. Target diverse colleges and students 6. Increase impact and efficiency Handshake is the only source that can enable AmeriCorps to effectively accomplish our college recruitment goals. This is because Handshake has an exclusive partnership-based talent marketplace. A Handshake College Recruitment Platform Subscription will be purchased under sole source justification for the following reasons: 1. Handshake is the only talent marketplace in the United States that incorporates students, universities, and employers. 2. Handshake has an exclusive partnership with the universities which allows the agency to expand higher education partnerships programmatically. Over 1,400 4- year Universities in the U.S. partner directly with Handshake, which includes over 90% of the top 500 Universities in the U.S. 3. Handshake is the only early talent marketplace that integrates with the university registrar's database and therefore the only place that provides access to verified student academic data. Handshake's university partners give access to all of their students, resulting in over 12 million students actively leveraging the platform. This is the largest early talent network in the United States. 4. Handshake's network has the largest volume of underrepresented students in the United States, which is inclusive of over 215 Minority Serving Institutions and over 63 HBCUs. 5. Handshake's large scale early talent network is relied upon by over 575,000 employers today, including 100% of the fortune 500. AmeriCorps Market Research shows that no other vendor's College Recruitment Platform can replicate what Handshake's platform can offer. Handshake has captured a much larger market share by adding in the university connection to its equation. Unlike all other competitors, Handshake has exclusive partnerships with over 1,400 educational institutions, which allows for an efficient built-in growth engine of talent. Handshake is unique in that it provides total access to over 12 million college and university students and has a focus on student diversity. This Notice of Intent is not a request for proposal. Information received from interested parties will be considered solely for the purpose of determining whether to conduct a competitive procurement. The circumstances permitting Other Than Full and Open Competition is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1, "Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy Agency requirements." In accordance with (IAW) FAR 5.207(c)15, the reason justifying the lack of competition is that, after extensive Market Research, no other responsible source was identified that could meet the Government's needs. IAW FAR 5.207(c)16, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the agency. Responses to this electronic notice must be submitted by 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time on March 15, 2023. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. Interested parties shall email all statements to Jim Thomasson at jthomasson@cns.gov and Felix Rivera at frivera@cns.gov and must provide clear and concise documentation indicating their capability to fulfill the Government's requirement.