Due: Feb. 7, 1998

This is a group project. Please talk with me if this presents a problem.

Problems and Opportunities. For the organizational context your group selected and described, do a little brainstorming among yourselves about how this organization (or one like it) might be improved with the receipt of some earmarked grant money. Some possibilities include:

• a new product or service,
• the upgrade or expansion of an existing service or product,
• a specialized effort to reach a particular target population,
• training for current staff members,
• the provision of equipment for a particular purpose,
• redesign of a system,
• modification to the space.

There are many other possibilities. Once you have a good list of possibilities, you will need to agree on one of these ideas as the one you will develop for a proposal.

To best meet requirements of the assignment, the scope of your proposal should be roughly in the $50,000 to $100,000 range and have a duration of one year or less (a pilot project might be a good possibility when considering a new service or project). In addition, the proposal should not include the addition of permanent staff members (which you might infer from the one year or less criterium).

Support for your Proposal. Think about why the proposal idea you have selected would be a good thing for your organization. Does it solve a particular problem? Is this problem one shared by similar organizations elsewhere? Is it an innovative idea that will enhance your organization's reputation as a leader? Will it improve some aspect of the organization's services or functions? Will it demonstrate the feasibility (or not) of some much larger and more expensive proposed change? Will it enable the organization to do something important that could not be done before? Will your proposed idea help some special constiuency in particular ways? Why is helping this group beneficial to your community? to society in general?

Write the Proposal Idea. Once you have generated a list of good reasons supporting your proposed project, organize these reasons into some logical order, and you are ready to write the short paper for the assignment. Please include a catchy or descriptive short title for your proposal, a description of it, the reasons why it is needed or will be valuable, and a tentative guess about its possible cost. If you wish to provide a line or two showing how you arrived at your cost figure, I will be interested but it isn't a requirement.

Format. Final copy should be a web document on WebCT, pleasingly formatted. Make sure to inclue a descriptive title, the names of all members of your group, and the date of your draft document.

©: Evelyn Daniel, 1998. All rights reserved.
Page revised 1/17/98.