Assignment Five Homework
Online Learning
OL 102 Project Architecture: Planning for Impact.
Center for Sustainable Impact: https://csd-i.org/project-architecture-ol-102/.

This week’s resources:
Class Home Page
Assignment Five Discussion
Download Class Documents: Two Page Compelling Fact Sheet
Magee Project Example Assignment 5
Capturing Compelling Stories From the Field
Capturing Compelling Photos From the Field

Assignment Five: The Compelling 2-Page Fact Sheet
Getting Started
Go to the Class Download Documents page and Download the Assignment 5 Compelling Two-Page Fact Sheet. It has been annotated with red headings that you will eventually erase. They are there to help you understand the purpose of each section and their progressive order in the document.

Go through the document and change obvious things like project names and dates and donor names; but kept the format of the document intact.

Next you will be able to cut and paste and adapt things that you have already written for this course (like from your logframe). This will save you time, it will also make this document be parallel to your back-up documentation.

Finally, you will craft this fact sheet so that it is compelling and enjoyable to read. This will create a new window into an otherwise highly structured project design.

Compelling Need
We need a negative compelling story line in this paragraph. Go back to your problem statement, your notes from the Ten-Seed process, your summary of the community’s needs, and the original negative impact statement. Look for any photos you may have taken. Read the September 2009 newsletter on capturing compelling stories from the field.

What is a compelling story? It is the human side of what we have worked so hard systematize in this course. It is the thing that pulls at a donor’s heart strings. It is the soft, intangible part of the project. It is the thing the impact statement is written about. It is why we are in development.

So gather your Assignment One images and your negative impact statement and your problem statement and your impressions and craft a negative compelling need paragraph. Every single one of you in this course can do it to: I have already seen you do it.

The Appeal
Donors don’t have time. So get right to the point about what you are looking for. Draw upon your logframe and look at your goal statement, your positive impact statement, your outcomes, and your budget for this paragraph. We need a positive compelling story line in this section: a call to action!

Go to your budget and insert only the value of the donor’s contribution (the 65%) of the total budget of this paragraph.

About Your Organization
Be very careful here. Keep this short. Donors are bored to tears with country statistics, organizational charts, and organizational history. If they want it they will ask for it later. They just want to know quickly if you are capable of doing the job.

So highlight a couple of successes, mention partners you may work with so they will feel that you have a good support network, and the fact that you have experience in specific areas that will be important for this project.

How You Plan To Solve This Problem
This is a simple cut and paste of your Assignment Two of the first course (OL 101) project outline. Short on info? You can also cut and paste from the descriptions of your logframe outputs and sub-goals.

Measurement of Success
You have two options here. If you can highlight verifiable success of projects that your organization has concluded – do that. If you are a new organization, or this project discipline is new to you, use the summary paragraphs from your Assignment Three evidence based activity assignment.

Budget Narrative
The project cost comes from your detailed budget. The narrative parts are your activities on the logframe. This narrative needs to present cut-and-dried information in a friendly, compelling, “act now” sort of a way. Point out that the donor’s contribution is only a portion of the overall budget; include what your contribution will be.

The Conclusion
This just summarizes the six sections above; mostly it is a combination of your outcome statements and your goal statement from your logframe.

After you have written your first draft, read it through and correct any obvious errors and typos. Then put it down for a day so that you will be fresh when you look at it again.

Your next task is to begin crafting the document so that it is well written and compelling. I may spend an hour a day over three days editing a document like this. If you get stuck, ask a friend who has editing skills to help you.

If you can’t do this in 2 pages – including two or three photos – it is too long. Ask a friend to help you edit it down to two pages. Make sure a friend reads it for clarity (a sentence might be clear to you, but unclear to the reader).

Part 2.
A list of 2 potential NGO partners, and two donors that you can share this working project proposal with.
Using some of the donor ideas in this week’s discussion, make a list of 2 potential NGO partners, and two donors that you could share this working project proposal with next week. We will make an appointment with one donor for next week; this can be the same donor (hopefully will be!) you met with in Assignment 6 of OL 101.

The homework to turn in will:
1. Compelling Two-Page Fact Sheet.
2. A list of four people that you could visit, the name of the person you chose to make an appointment with for next week, the organization they work for, and their job title.

See you next week.
Tim Magee