“A set of strategies to structure, evaluate, and actively manage contracts strategically, using data to help local governments leverage procurement as a tool to make progress on their highest priority goals.”
San Antonio, Texas
2023 Gold Bloomberg Philanthropies What Works Cities Certification
Collectively, cities around the world spend more than $6 trillion a year on goods and services. Yet city leaders often are not very strategic or data-driven about that spend. Procurement is often viewed mostly as a boring back-end process, rather than a tool to help the city achieve big goals.
San Antonio seeks to demonstrate otherwise. A good example is how the city contracts for $29 million in human services programs, including everything from afterschool reading workshops to domestic violence prevention to meals for seniors. More than forty various nonprofits apply through the procurement process to provide services targeting community needs and leveraging private funding to improve community indicators of well-being.
To stay strategic, San Antonio uses a data-driven “consolidated funding” process. A request for proposal is put out every two years, anchored by four “long-term results” city leaders are aiming to achieve. Those outcomes are:
- Children and youth are safe, healthy, resilient and ready to succeed in school and life
- Individuals and families are financially secure and in stable housing
- Homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring
- Older adults are healthy, engaged and independent
Each of these long-term outcomes are based on community indicators which track the social and economic well-being of the community. The City establishes goals to move these community indicators in a positive direction, such as reducing the number of families experiencing domestic violence by 10 percent or reducing the number of homeless families by 25 percent. The City works with delegate agencies to establish programmatic performance measures utilizing the Results-Based Accountability Framework, which contribute to achieving these goals. Delegate agencies are required to report performance data on a periodic basis with disaggregated client data and demographics as part of telling their “story” of their work. The Department of Human Services has utilized this format of data-driven contracting for more than five years in the oversight and management of social service contracts along with publishing performance results quarterly on the City’s website.
This transparency is something San Antonio embeds across its entire procurement process to make sure potential bidders — including local and small businesses — know about opportunities. On its website, the city publishes anticipated solicitations a couple of months before they go live; contract opportunities that are currently open for bidding; contract opportunities that have recently closed; and solicitations that are currently under review with intent to award a contract. There’s also an archive of awarded contracts worth more than $50,000.
What’s more, San Antonio invests in the capacity of vendors, including local and small businesses, to do business with the city. One program provides mentorship for owners of small local businesses.
San Antonio City Government Resources:
- Department of Human Resources Consolidated Funding RFP
- Human Services Consolidated Funding Performance Data (FY 2025)
- San Antonio Procurement’s Bidding & Contracting Portal