342 Discussion 6 -

Assignment Six Discussion Page
Online Learning
OL 342 Project Architecture: Managing for Impact.
https://csd-i.org/ol-342-adapting-climate-change/

This week’s resources:
Assignment Six Homework
Magee Example Project Assignment 6

Assignment Six. How will you organize your ideas for presentation to a donor?

Part 1.
What I’m going to promote to you this week is that you collect 12 week’s worth of your assignment examples and have them bound into a presentation book.

You can use this presentation book in a meeting with a potential employer, in a meeting with your boss when you’re looking for raise, or in a meeting with a donor when you hope to impress them with the quality of your work.

Whether this is a potential employer, a current boss, or a potential donor, a presentation book like this has frequently made my meetings successful. Sometimes people in meetings will ask if they can ‘borrow’ it; my experience is that I never see the book again.

In summary the presentation book of this course clearly shows what your project is about, it shows how we have built sustainability and impact into the project, it shows how we’re going to manage the project successfully, and it gives our audience a sense of our capabilities.

Part 2.
A few weeks ago I asked you to discuss your project with your coworkers and community members to get ideas and feedback from them. This week I want you to meet someone a bit more challenging with your project. This could be a potential donor, your boss—or your professor if you are a student.

This exercise has several valuable benefits:
The first is to start thinking in terms of promoting projects to potential donors, and to start thinking about who might be potential donors.

The second benefit if you haven’t done this before is to have the opportunity to do it and to experience what a donor appointment is like.

The third obvious benefit is to get a different kind of feedback than what you’ve been getting from your co-workers and community members.

A donor, or your boss, or your professor may all have a different perspective on development projects than your co-workers do. They also have the power to let you proceed or not and so it’s very valuable to understand what their perspective is so that you will better be able to sell it to them when your concept is fully developed.

Receiving donor feedback and guidance this week will help you develop your project so that it will be better received when you decide to actually submit it.

A donor will also be impressed that you would seek out guidance from them. It will plant a seed in their mind that you could be someone good to partner with on a project. Much in the same way as we have worked to get a buy-in from our community members, we are now beginning to work to get a buy-in from the people that may fund the project. If they like what they see as the project design evolves, and truly feel that you listened to their ideas and comments, they are going to feel a sense of ownership for the project. This will increase your chances of getting a project funded.

It’s been a pleasure working with all of you over the past twelve weeks, there’s a very short evaluation form in the download documents menu and I would really appreciate your taking the time to fill that out. I’m hoping that you will have some comments and ideas for improving the course.

Thank you very much for all of your hard work.

There is a five-minute evaluation form in Download Class Documents. We would really appreciate it if you helped us to improve our courses by filling it out.

Click on homework for Assignment Six to get started.

Tim Magee