Defend Yourself

So, now you have identified your funder and written your needs statement. The next step is to put together the bulk of the proposal—the “narrative.”

Write a mission statement (remember, it is based on the funder’s objectives, not yours)
Determine the tasks that it will take to move from where you are to where you want to end up
Take those two elements and convert them into a logic model matrix, showing in schematic form the relation between the objectives, the outputs, and the outcomes; and include how you will measure outputs and outcomes and what the benchmarks for performance will be.
Describe the evaluation process you will pursue that will result in obtaining the measures you specified in your logic model.

This assignment is asking you to put together the heart of your proposal, called “the narrative,” and is based on the last 3 weeks work on “the Program Model” (a. Goals & Objectives, b. Methods, and c. Evaluation). If you haven’t already done them, complete the worksheets for those three sections, review the links to those sections, and review the text as well.

Now:

Write a one-paragraph mission statement—a one-sentence statement, and maybe a few sentences unpacking that statement. Remember to focus on what the funder needs to see done, not what you need (you need money, but the funder wants to see more people in better housing or more housing that makes fewer demands on the environment or…) That’s step 1.

Then lay out (I like to literally draw it out as a flow chart or a steps along a timeline or….) everything you are going to have to do to accomplish what you are promising to do (begin a the beginning, go through the middle, and arrive at the end—will you start by soliciting bids, or soliciting designs, or doing a needs analysis, or…. And will the end be when you sell the units to end-users, or when you have assessed all the costs of a working model or….). This can be a table or a line drawing or a written narrative of one or more paragraphs. This is step 2.

Then take your list of tasks and put it all in a matrix, like those in the examples behind the hyperlink on logic models. The “objectives” are the end goals (there will be only one or two or three, and they will be closely related to what the funder wants to see in the end). The next column is for outputs (these are actions you take to accomplish your objectives—divide them up among the goals (if one action serves two objectives, enter it in both places on the matrix). The next column is for outcomes—these are not what you will do, but what impact your action will have on the beneficiaries (what is your action supposed to accomplish? These should be tied to your objectives & goals, but there might be several outcomes for each objective. The next column is how you will measure the outcome (for example, if an outcome is “improved energy efficiency” you might measure it by “difference in home heating costs for housing of comparable size and age”). The last column is benchmarks—what target are you hoping to hit (say, “20% reduction in home heating costs”). There will be at least one measure for each outcome, and each measure should have a benchmark. So, you will have constructed a matrix (table) by the end of this exercise. This is step 3.

For the evaluation process, take all of the measures that you specified in the logic model. Design & describe a process that you will follow that will result in getting all of that information (numbers for all of those measures). Be sure to include all of your measures in this description. This could be one paragraph, or it could be two or three (or more, depending). This is your evaluation plan, and is step 4.

MSU