Reelfoot Compliance Group, LLC seal Reelfoot Compliance Group Union City, Tennessee

Method, disclosure and limits

How we work

You are about to hand a stranger a document your quarter depends on. You should know how it gets handled and where the edges are.

The method

Seven steps, every file, in this order.

  1. Conflict and clearance screen, before anything else. The first thing we ask for is the solicitation or notice number and the state the work sits in, before you tell us anything about your approach or your pricing. The number tells us whether somebody else already has that file with us. The state tells us whether anything in that jurisdiction has to be cleared before we can take you on, which is rare on the bid side and occasionally real on the nonprofit side. Either way you find out in the first two minutes rather than the third week.
  2. The shred. Every sentence in the document that carries an obligation comes out into a matrix: every shall, every must, every at a minimum, every instruction to offerors, every evaluation criterion. Each one gets a requirement number, a source section and page, a type, and the place in the response where it will be answered. Done by hand this is eight to sixteen hours. This is where most of the leverage in the practice lives.
  3. The outline. Built in the agency's order, not ours. The response follows the sequence of the instructions and mirrors the evaluation criteria, so the person scoring it can find the points without hunting. Evaluators are tired and on a schedule. Making them work is how you lose.
  4. The draft. Written to the page limit, from your material: your past performance, your personnel, your approach, whatever you already have on paper. We do not invent your company.
  5. The addendum watch. Every addendum gets diffed against the live matrix and what changed gets flagged. Failing to acknowledge an addendum is the single most common way a compliant bid dies, and it dies for a reason that takes ninety seconds to prevent.
  6. Red team and consistency pass. The draft scored against the evaluation criteria as written. Then a sweep for acronym drift, numbers that contradict each other across a hundred and fifty pages, names and tenses that wandered. People are bad at that check across long documents. It is worth running properly.
  7. The submission checklist. Forms, signatures, notarizations, addenda, page and format limits, file naming, packaging, separation of price from the technical volume, registrations current, portal mechanics tested before the last hour. Signed off line by line.

Disclosure

Yes, we use AI. Here is exactly where, and exactly where we do not.

We would rather you hear this from us than wonder about it. AI is why a $500 compliance review is possible at all, and it is why we can price against firms that bill a hundred and fifty dollars an hour for the same reading. It handles extraction, coverage and first drafts of prose. That is real leverage and we use it deliberately.

It does not touch facts. Ever.

The rule this whole practice runs on

AI produces structure, coverage and prose. The client supplies and attests to every fact. That line is in the engagement letter as an explicit client responsibility, and it is there because it is true, not because it protects us.

Never generated, never automated, no exceptions:

  • Past performance references
  • Contract values and dates
  • Agency names and points of contact
  • Project outcomes and claims
  • Key personnel credentials and degrees
  • Certifications and licensure
  • Employment dates
  • Certifications and representations, which are sworn
  • Pricing, at any time, in any form
  • Legal terms and exceptions
  • Insurance limits and indemnification
  • Citations to statutes and standards

A made-up past performance reference is not a typo. It is a misrepresentation to a government entity, and the road from there runs through disqualification, contract termination, False Claims Act exposure and debarment. Nobody is putting a client on that road to save an hour.

And the other direction: a growing number of funders restrict AI generated content outright. The National Institutes of Health will not accept applications substantially developed by AI, the National Science Foundation has restrictions of its own, and state and local solicitations are beginning to carry AI representations. Checking for an AI clause is a standing line on our shred checklist, treated the same as addendum acknowledgment. Where a funder prohibits it, the work is done without it and priced accordingly. You will know before we start.

Limits

Things we are not, and will not pretend to be.

  • LAW We are not attorneys and this is not a law practice. We do not represent anyone before a board, a commission or a court, we do not draft appeals of records denials, and we do not give legal opinions. Tennessee defines law business broadly enough that acting in a representative capacity to secure property rights is a lawyer's job, and we keep clear of that line by a wide margin. When a question needs counsel, we will say so and stop.
  • INV We are not private investigators and we will not research people. Tennessee law reaches anyone who accepts employment to obtain information about a person's business, honesty, integrity, credibility or character, and there is no exemption in it for public records research. Our records work is about government: solicitations, awards, contract terms, evaluation summaries. If somebody asks us to pull a file on a competitor or a person, the answer is no and we will tell them why.
  • ENG We are not engineers and we will not blur that line. We build the asset register, the water balance, the financial model and the plan that sits on top of them. Anything that turns on engineering judgment, a condition assessment or a capital plan, goes to a licensed engineer who signs for it. Kentucky's Commission has ordered a professional engineering firm for capital plans in water loss cases and it was right to. We do the data and the money, and we say so on the cover.
  • AUD We are not auditors, and a review is not an audit. A Readiness Review reads the records you hand us and tells you what they say. It is not an audit, not an engineering evaluation, not a legal opinion, and it does not certify that you comply with anything. Where a document has to be certified by a CPA before a board can rely on it, a CPA certifies it and signs the cover. That is written into the engagement letter so nobody has to wonder later.
  • LOB We are not lobbyists and we will not advocate for your award. Preparing and submitting a written response to a published notice is professional service, expressly carved out under 31 U.S.C. 1352, and a written response is not a lobbying contact. Calling a program officer to argue your case is a different activity entirely. We stay on the writing side of that line by working in writing.
  • FUND We never touch your money. We may advise, plan and write, but we never receive, hold or control contributions and we never directly solicit them. That is the line between a writer and a professional solicitor, it is not cosmetic, and it is written into every nonprofit engagement letter. Where your state requires us to register before we can work for your organization, we register first.
  • WIN We cannot promise you a win and will not imply one. Nobody in this field can. Most grant applications lose and everybody in the sector knows it. What we can promise is that your submission will be responsive, that it will answer the criteria in the order they were asked, and that if we think you should not bid we will say so before you have spent the money.

Who this is

Jeff Goddard, Union City.

Twenty years of buying, renovating and holding residential property, the last four of them here in Obion County. Alongside that I have started and run my own companies and consulted for other people running theirs, which is the part that actually prepared me for this work: reading a contract for what it obligates you to do, pricing a job before you have all the information, and turning a dense set of requirements into something a small crew can follow without a manual. Before any of that I built the data and workflow systems behind regulatory reporting in healthcare, which is the same problem a utility clerk has with a filing calendar, only with different forms. It is also why I know that nobody running a six-person operation has a spare eighty hours for paperwork.

Reelfoot Compliance Group, LLC is a Tennessee limited liability company based in Union City, and we take clients in any state. Proposal and grant writing is not a licensed trade anywhere in the country, and a solicitation issued in Boise reads the same way one issued in Dyersburg does. A handful of states attach conditions to paid work for charities, so the state you are in is one of the first things we ask for and we will tell you straight off if it changes anything. Usually it does not. The firm is new, our prices reflect that, and the standing offer on the front page is how we would rather prove the work than by telling you about it.

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