Kevin Richardson Foundation in South Africa: Work and Global Significance

Instructions: Develop an outline for your proposal to the board (full proposal due the final week). The project proposal outline is intended to structure your plan for delivering your presentation. This outline will inform the components of your course project as well as the appropriate order of presentation. Often, before submitting a final piece of work to the head of an organization, an employee may be asked to create an outline of the work to be done.

Typically, many of the project's key stakeholders (like your Board) are not fully aware of the full nature of the project. This is your opportunity to prepare them in advance of your presentation.

Your outline should include the following:

Explain the project plan to key stakeholders and discuss its key components. Like a roadmap, it provides the direction for the project. The project plan is the major work product from the entire planning process, so it contains all the planning documents for the project.

Define roles and responsibilities. Not all key stakeholders will review all documents, so it is necessary to determine who on the project needs to approve which parts of the plan. Project sponsors (who will approve the plan), end users ( and others involved should be identified and defined.

Develop a Scope Statement. The Scope Statement is the foundation for the rest of the project. It describes the project and is used to get common agreement among the stakeholders about the scope. The Scope Statement clearly describes what the outcome of the project will be. It is the basis for getting the buy-in and agreement from the sponsor and other stakeholders and decreases the chances of miscommunication. The Scope Statement should include Project objectives, stating what will occur within the project to solve the business problem, the benefits of completing the project, as well as the project justification.

Analyze project quality and risks. The emphasis on project quality is on preventing errors, rather than inspecting the product at the end of the project and then eliminating errors. Project quality also recognizes that quality is a management responsibility and needs to be performed throughout the project. A risk is an event that may or may not happen, but could have a significant effect on the outcome of a project, if it were to occur. For example, there may be a 50% chance of a significant change in sponsorship in the next few months. Analyzing risks includes making a determination of both the probability that a specific event may occur and if it does, assessing its impact.

Your proposal outline should be concise and stick to the details of your proposal.

Course Outline:Select an organization (scientific research organization, scientific nonprofit, etc.), and an issue item, project, or challenge current to the organization’s mission and need. These selections will create the foundation of the remainder of the term’s work. In this initial post, describe the organization, and explain why you chose it and/or what makes it important to you.

Then, provide a concise, comprehensive summary of the nature of the organization’s work, who the organization is trying to help, the size of the organization, and if it is a local, national, or international org.

Finally, identify a potential theory-based rhetorical strategy for directing the research, analysis and communication you will be doing for this Course Project. Explain why you chose this particular theory for this particular application. Why/how does it match up with the work that the organization is doing, and the particular issue item, project or challenge you’ve defined as the focus for the work you will be doing this term. Use relevant source material to strengthen your claims.