Implementation Plan

Here are the instructions for the entire Implementation Plan:

The plan will detail why and how the jurisdiction should proceed in sufficient detail that decision makers, such as a town council, mayor, city or county executive, or board of commissioners, can be sufficiently informed to decide on the merits whether to implement the plan. To sufficiently inform decision makers, students must address the major areas (below).

The plan can be organized as you see fit, as long as you make sure that the following major areas are discussed:

• Context Ensure that readers know 1) the purpose for the plan; 2) jurisdiction or organization where it’s being implemented (can use your discretion, but not the Land of Oz, Magic Kingdom, or your own private island; in other words, strive for reality); and 3) the nature of the innovation you’re recommending.
• Situation Explain (applying your understanding of a current problem or challenge) what’s the situation being addressed, why that needs to change, and how the innovation can be expected to help.
• Approach Describe the major steps that need to be accomplished. Put yourself in the place of the (skeptical) audience who want to believe that their problem can be solved but will require convincing that you understand the keys to making the solution work.
• Lessons learned Identify obstacles you expect to encounter, based on the previous implementation of the innovation (from the article you selected), and how the obstacles can be overcome.
• Next steps Detail a few initial actions necessary to start turning your plan into reality.

It does not have to be in memo format, but do remember that you’re developing a report for a decision-making group and write for that audience. It should NOT read like a research paper written for a college professor.

However, rules of citation DO APPLY!

If you use other sources of information, make sure that any words not your own are cited: that is, others’ words are surrounded by quotation marks and are appropriately sourced. Please make sure that most (or all) of the words in what you turn in are yours. Limit quotes to <50 words. I want to know what you have to say, not what you can dig up!

The report should be approximately 8-10 (double-spaced) pages in length.

Case : Howard Dean’s political campaign (doesn’t have to be applied to politics… nonprofits also depend on fundraising)

http://cphcmp.smu.edu/2004election/howard-dean/

https://time.com/2946448/howard-dean-scream-obama-president/

Additional instructor’s comments about Attached Word Document Written Case Study

[Currently an A, which is a preliminary grade as far as the final is concerned. That is, you’ve got the A on the draft, but will need to address some of the issues below in order to maintain that grade.] This is a really fine implementation plan draft. It’s not strictly necessary to put the “recipient” organization in the title of the report (I didn’t take off for that), but you should always keep it in mind. I like the way this begins, so that readers gain some context (the Internet’s role in society) but don’t have to wait too long to find out what you intend for the here and now.

The initial parts of the paper work well to demonstrate the overall purpose of applying the innovation in the recipient organization and the linkage to the donor organization’s experience. It appears that the connection (more on this below) is drawn somewhat narrowly between only the fundraising aspects of the Dean campaign’s reliance on the Internet and the similar functions used by non-profits. The Dean campaign experienced more problems than that to be able to “go to school on” for Bestfriends.org.

You make a crucial claim in the early going: “The organization’s donation page helps potential donors to feel like they understand their donation is going to make a difference.” That’s really the difference between what drove the Dean campaign, compared to political efforts that preceded it. Campaigns always depended on “true believers”; the difference is where they came from. Check Nicco Mele’s (Dean’s webmaster) account, which includes relocation, loss of a girlfriend, and other life-shattering effects of his devotion to Howard Dean.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a41615/the-dean-scream-oral-history/

The point is there were lots of campaign staff and volunteers like that, and they came from everywhere! So the thing I’d challenge you to consider is how your initiative has the opportunity to go beyond just raising funds. Think how much more powerful is the outreach if it harnesses the Internet’s capacity for connecting people who wouldn’t otherwise be connected. Why not offer the opportunity for people to network and share their devotion to the cause. In that way, “Best Friends” attains a dual meaning: encompassing not only human-animal friendship/companionship, but also friendship/companionship among like-minded, like-motivated members. You don’t have to do this, of course, but it strikes me as a natural application of the take-aways from the Dean campaign. The other take-aways are better suited for the lessons learned section. You have some technologically oriented lessons learned but are missing, it appears to me, the disconnect between level of interest or engagement (you’re using “traffic” as the analogous metric) and the level of organization. If the model is based merely on customer service, that may be sufficient. The question arises: what’s the difference between your service and the thousands of others competing for eyeballs and clicks? Interest, after all, is ephemeral (transitory), so commitment requires deeper connection. I’d recommend an explicit reference to Borins and the types of obstacles he identified (see the first table in the After-Action Report instructions). One that springs to mind immediately, aside from technology, which you’ve addressed already in impressive detail, is “reaching target group” (Borins). As I said at the outset, really fine work, which produced a strong, realistic plan.