NOTICE OF INTENT TO AWARD SOLE SOURCE
The 772d Enterprise Sourcing Squadron (772 ESS) intends to award a Firm-Fixed-Price (FFP) contract to a single source, Cengage Learning, Inc., ,under the authority of RFO 6.103-1 (Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements) on on 30 September 2026. The period of performance (PoP) shall be: 30 September 2026 – 29 September 2029.
PSC:
7630
NAICS:
516210
Small Business Size Standard:
$47M
Subscription:
Legal, Entrepreneur & Business Plan Subscription
Supplier:
Cengage Learning, Inc.
Product Description:
The mission of the Department of Defense (DoD) Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) Libraries is to support military personnel assigned to contingency operations, remote sites, and military missions in accordance with DoDI 1015.10, Military Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Programs. To support mission readiness, voluntary education, quality of life, and the recreational and educational needs of eligible patrons, DoD Libraries require a Legal, Entrepreneur & Business Plan.
The requirement is for a database that integrates with the existing Gale database that provides comprehensive business, legal, and reference resources to support entrepreneurs, business students, and library customers. The database must include the complete Business Plans Handbook series, peer-reviewed full-text journals and other business resources, legal forms, and user features such as saving, printing, downloading, annotating, citing, and seamless search access with minimal response times.
- Must provide a Business: Plan Builder is a step-by-step online planning tool for starting, managing, and optimizing a business or nonprofit. The program’s intuitive dashboard walks users through five areas of exploration to develop a business plan focused on long-term success.
- Must provide users with a direct path to additional resources and tools at their points of need, Business: Plan Builder provides integrated access to business: entrepreneurship and Legal Forms when libraries subscribe to any of these products.
- Must help users explore what they can bring to the table as an entrepreneur and assess where they stand in preparing to start a business.
- Must employ tools such as Canvas, Lean Canvas, SWOT, PEST, and Porter’s Five Forces to plan the high-level framework in which a business will operate.
- Must provide break-even analysis that delivers insight to determine when a user’s business will be able to cover expenses and begin to realize a profit.
- Must provide business plans that prepares users for presentations to potential investors and lenders—this section includes an executive summary, lean business plan, full business plan, pitch deck, and strategic marketing plan.
- Must provide financial projections that provide a robust analysis of a company’s financial future, encompassing capital expenditures, sales, equity, taxes, inventory, and more
- Must include an easy-to-browse home page features four key business stages—plan, fund, start, and manage. Users can also find information through lists of popular business topics, business types, and a “how to” collection of questions.
- Must provide over 1,200 business plans from the Business Plans Handbook series give users a template for success. Business plans contain all parts of a standard business plan including executive summary, industry analysis, business structure, and financial projections.
- Must provide indexed collection of resources includes small business eBooks, 400+ journals and magazines, and directories listing thousands of associations, consultants, consulting organizations, trade shows, business information sources, and more.
- Must provide overviews, news, magazines, journal articles, and recommended web resources keep small business owners up to date on their industries.
- Must provide a database of legal forms to help support the DoW Libraries customers.
- Must provide current, general use legal forms and guidance. Database should provide legal forms from the fifty (50) states drafted by attorneys and law firms in subject areas from real estate, wills, bankruptcy, bill of sale, contracts, employment, incorporate, landlord tenant, living wills, name change, power of attorney, real estate, taxes, divorce, to other subject areas.
- Must include backfiles and unlimited simultaneous access to content by users.
- In addition to legal forms, this database should also provide legal Q&A, attorney directory, product descriptions, law digest with major legal case coverage, and comprehensive form description documents.
- Needs to be able to browse by subject with visual topic map/finder graphic alternative to get regular search results
- Needs to have notes and highlight features to articles/topics that can be downloaded or printed by customer for later usage and work seamlessly with Google and Microsoft customer personal accounts for saving information for later usage.
- Needs to have a mobile application that allows users to save articles, citations, and links
- Must provide free staff training and complimentary marketing services.
- Must be able to provide statistics for each branch of service and other category.
- Must provide free staff training and complimentary marketing resources.
- Must work with contract POC to establish authentication methods to provide optimal accessibility for all eligible patrons.
- DoW Libraries is looking for an established vendor in the library commercial marketplace and not a custom-built product/platform/subscription.
- Must provide a single sign on login for all registered DoWL users - SSo methodology – SAML attributes are required for authentication
- Security between the Website and server must be Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.3
- Must be able to supply or allow retrieval of database usage statistics by Branch of Service (Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Military OneSource/Other, and Navy)
- Must have HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) with long duration deployed on the servers to mitigate/prevent man-in-the-middle attacks
- Website certificates should be RSA 2048-bits (SHA256withRSA)
- VCL must be able to test the platform to evaluate if it meets requirements. Must provide username and password to view content on platform.
This notice of intent is not a request for competitive quotations. However, all responsible sources may submit a capability statement, proposal, or quotation, which shall be considered by the Government. The Government will consider responses received by 28 August 2026, 12:00 PM, CST for this notice. The Government will not pay for any information received in response to this announcement. A determination not to compete this requirement based upon responses to this notice is solely within the discretion of the Government.
Contractors Should Be Aware of the Following Information:
1. Contractors MUST include the following information:
a. Points of contact, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers.
b. Identification as a large U.S. business, a small U.S. business, or a foreign business. Please note that size indicated should be based on the NAICS code for this effort listed above.
c. Identification of any other socioeconomic status including Women-Owned Small Business, Economically Disadvantaged Small Business, 8(a), Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business, Veteran Owned Small Business or HUBZone.
d. Company CAGE Code and UEI.
2. If this posting specifically references brand name products, offerors are encouraged to suggest products other than those specifically referenced. Responses must address how the alternate product meets the product characteristics specified above.
3. Submitted information shall be UNCLASSIFIED.
4. Responses are limited to 10 pages in a Microsoft Word or PDF compatible format.
Responses shall be e-mailed to Contracting Specialist: SrA William Sasser at william.sasser.2@us.af.mil and Contracting Officer: TSgt Vaughn Swinton at vaughn.swinton@us.af.mil @us.af.mil no later than 28 August 2026 at 12:00 PM CST.
