How Many RFPs Are Rush Jobs?

One in ten RFPs gives you a week or less to respond. That is not an estimate or an industry rumor. We measured it directly across 7,569 RFPs posted between October 2025 and February 2026. Exactly 771 RFPs (10.2%) had seven days or fewer between the posting date and the submission deadline. Within that group, 225 listings (3.0% of all RFPs) allowed three days or fewer, essentially requiring a same-week or next-day turnaround.

For most proposal teams, these rush opportunities are invisible. By the time the RFP is discovered, vetted, and assigned, the deadline has already passed. But for teams equipped with real-time discovery feeds and pre-built content libraries, rush RFPs represent a structural competitive advantage. When your competitors cannot respond, the competitive field narrows dramatically, and your win probability increases accordingly.

Which Categories Have the Most Rush RFPs?

Software dominates rush RFP volume, accounting for 365 of the 771 rush listings (47.3%). This makes sense given that software procurement often involves renewals, license expansions, and sources-sought notices where the buying organization already has a preferred vendor and is using the short timeline to validate that choice. Marketing follows with 33 rush RFPs, then Construction (29), Consulting (27), Web Development (22), IT Services (21), and Healthcare IT (20).

The concentration in Software is significant for companies in that space. If your firm responds to software RFPs and you lack the ability to generate a compliant first draft within 24-48 hours, you are automatically disqualified from roughly one in ten opportunities in your market. Over a year, that can represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed pipeline.

Why Do Rush RFPs Exist?

Rush timelines typically occur for one of four reasons. First, the buying organization may have an urgent operational need, such as a security incident requiring cybersecurity services or an expiring contract that needs immediate renewal. Second, federal and state agencies sometimes issue Sources Sought notices with short response windows to quickly gauge market interest before launching a formal solicitation. Third, some organizations deliberately use short timelines to limit the field to vendors who are already prepared and familiar with the requirements. Fourth, internal procurement delays can compress what was originally a 30-day timeline into a one-week scramble as the opportunity works its way through approval chains.

Understanding the reason behind a rush timeline helps you decide whether to bid. A Sources Sought notice with a three-day window often requires only a brief capability statement, not a full proposal. An urgent operational need, on the other hand, may require a complete technical and pricing response on a compressed schedule.

How to Build a Rush-Ready Proposal Operation

Winning rush RFPs requires preparation before the opportunity arrives. The key is treating your proposal infrastructure as a standing capability rather than a project-by-project effort. There are four foundational investments that make rush response possible.

First, maintain a comprehensive, up-to-date answer library. The single biggest bottleneck in rush proposals is content creation. If 70-80% of common RFP questions already have vetted, current answers in your library, your team can focus on customization rather than drafting from scratch. Second, implement real-time opportunity monitoring. You cannot win a seven-day RFP if you discover it on day four. Automated feeds like Settle's RFP Hunter surface opportunities within hours of posting, not days.

Third, use AI-assisted drafting to produce a compliant first draft in minutes. The initial draft does not need to be perfect; it needs to be a workable starting point that your team can refine. Tools like Settle generate drafts by pulling from your existing library and matching answers to requirements semantically, cutting time-to-first-draft from hours to minutes. Fourth, pre-define your go/no-go criteria so that rush decisions happen in minutes, not meetings. A simple checklist covering contract value, competitive positioning, resource availability, and strategic fit can prevent your team from wasting precious rush time on low-probability bids.

The Math of Rush RFP Advantage

Consider a simplified model. If your market sees 100 RFPs per quarter and 10% are rush jobs, that is 10 opportunities most competitors will not pursue. If your team can respond to seven of those ten, and the average contract value is $150,000, that is over $1 million in annual pipeline that your competitors are leaving on the table. Even at a modest 25% win rate, that translates to $262,500 in revenue that is structurally inaccessible to teams without rush capability.

This math is why proposal readiness is not just an efficiency play. It is a revenue strategy. Every hour you invest in building and maintaining your answer library, every workflow you automate, and every tool you deploy to accelerate discovery and drafting directly expands the addressable market your team can pursue.

Frequently Asked Questions

What qualifies as a rush RFP?

For the purposes of this analysis, a rush RFP is any opportunity with seven days or fewer between the posting date and the submission deadline. This definition captures 10.2% of all RFPs in our dataset (771 out of 7,569). Within that group, 225 RFPs (3.0%) had three days or fewer, which we classify as ultra-rush.

Can small teams realistically respond to rush RFPs?

Yes, provided they have the right infrastructure. A team of two to three people with a well-maintained answer library and AI-assisted drafting can produce a compliant first draft in under an hour for many standard RFPs. The key enablers are pre-built content, automated discovery, and AI drafting tools that eliminate the blank-page problem. Platforms like Settle are specifically designed to make this possible for small teams.

What is the win rate on rush RFPs compared to standard timelines?

While win rates vary widely by industry and company, rush RFPs generally have smaller competitive fields because fewer vendors can respond in time. Industry surveys from the Association of Proposal Management Professionals (APMP) suggest that reducing the number of competing bids from five to two or three can increase win probability by 15-25 percentage points, making rush RFPs a high-value segment for prepared teams.