What to put in a company profile, and how to design it

A company profile is the document a buyer, partner or donor opens when they need to decide whether your organisation is credible and capable. It is not a brochure. For a ministry, a UN agency or an NGO procurement team, it is part of the evidence they use to shortlist, register or approve a supplier.

That changes how you write it. The reader is usually checking a list of requirements, often under time pressure, and often comparing you with several other firms. Good company profile design starts from that list, not from what you would most like to say about yourselves.

The UN Secretariat uses the United Nations Global Marketplace (UNGM) for vendor registration, and registration at Basic Level is mandatory to take part in its tenders.¹ Higher levels need more: Level 1 and Level 2 require a certificate of incorporation or equivalent and at least three years in business, and Level 2 adds at least three reference letters and audited financial statements.¹ UNGM describes Level 2 as requiring further evidence of the supplier's experience and financial capacity.²

Government tenders in the region ask for similar proof. A 2026 request for expressions of interest from Kenya's State Department for Agriculture shortlisted consulting firms on their core business and years in business, relevant experience, and technical and managerial capability.³ A 2025 Rwanda Ministry of Health bidding document listed a certificate of company registration, certificates of good completion of similar contracts, and valid tax, social security and RDB good standing certificates among the documents bidders had to submit.⁴

Most strong profiles follow the same order, because it matches the order in which evaluators check things. Put the facts a reader needs to confirm eligibility early, and the detail that supports a technical score later. In our own practice, we find a profile of eight to sixteen pages covers most organisations; a longer document tends to hide the evidence that matters.

• Cover: legal name, logo, a one-line description of what you do, and contact details
• Who we are: when and where you were registered, ownership, locations and size of team
• Core services: what you do, described in the words your buyers use in their terms of reference
• Selected experience: similar assignments with client, scope, value and period
• Team: key people, their roles and relevant qualifications
• Approach and quality: how you work, standards you follow, and any policies buyers often request
• Legal and compliance: registration numbers, tax and other certificates you can supply on request
• Contact: one named person, phone, email and physical address

Experience is usually the section that wins or loses a shortlist. The Kenyan request for expressions of interest asked firms to give, for each similar assignment, the name and address of the client, the scope, the value and the period.³ If your profile already presents projects in that format, you can copy them straight into a submission instead of rebuilding them each time.

Choose work that matches the kind of contracts you want, and say plainly what your organisation did on each one. Where a buyer asks for proof, as the Rwandan bidding document did with completion certificates accompanied by the corresponding contract, keep those documents filed and ready rather than describing them in the profile.⁴ Only name a client if you have their permission to do so.

Many buyers and event organisers prefer a shorter document. Guidance published by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development describes a capability statement as very brief, preferably one page and one side, covering core competencies, differentiators, past performance, corporate data and contact information, and recommends distributing it as a PDF.⁵

For organisations that bid regularly, the answer is usually both. Keep a full company profile for tenders, registration and due diligence, and a one or two page capability statement for introductions, meetings, emails and events. The two should share the same facts, wording and design, so a reader who moves from one to the other sees the same organisation.

Readers of a company profile behave much like readers of a web page. In a well-known study by the Nielsen Norman Group, 79 percent of test users always scanned any new page, and only 16 percent read word by word.⁶ The same research recommends meaningful sub-headings, bulleted lists, one idea per paragraph and about half the word count of conventional writing.⁶

In practice, that means a clear grid, a consistent heading style, generous white space and numbers set where the eye will find them. Use your brand colours, but check the text against its background: WCAG asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text.⁷ Light grey text on white and white text on busy photographs are common failures. Photographs should show real work, people and places, captioned with what and where.

A profile with an expired certificate, a former director or a project from eight years ago undermines everything else in it. Review it at least once a year and after any major contract, change of address or change of leadership, and put the month and year of the latest update on the back page.

Export it as a PDF with a clear file name that includes your organisation's name and the year, keep the file small enough to email, and store an editable master so updates do not depend on one person or one designer.

• Legal name, registration details and years in business are on the first pages
• Services are described in the words buyers use
• Each project shows client, scope, value and period
• Certificates and references are filed and ready to send
• A one or two page capability statement matches the full profile
• Headings, short paragraphs and bullet lists make it easy to scan
• Text contrast meets at least 4.5:1
• The PDF is dated, clearly named and small enough to email