Proposal Report

Overview

  • 10% of Final Mark
  • Follow word limit guidelines in each section
  • The proposal is a public document to be viewed by your community partner(s). Be respectful and professional with your language in all parts of your report. Ensure your writing is clear and accessible to a wide audience.
  • Use APA style for in-text citations and reference section
  • Refer to the Proposal template from Canvas (remove instructions in your final version)
  • Review the sample proposal posted in Canvas

Overall objectives of the proposal report

  • To provide a means for the teaching team and your community partner to provide feedback on the design of your project
  • To begin the process of creating your final report and receive feedback on the initial components (you can re-use sections in your proposal in your final report).

Learning Objectives

1. Critically analyze connections between food, health, and the environment within food security discourse.

  • Evaluate the contributions of different food-related academic disciplines to addressing food security issues
  • Integrate disciplinary and systems approaches to understanding food security issues

2. Propose, implement and evaluate a community-based food systems project with an interdisciplinary team.

  • Articulate community values and objectives within broader food system theories
  • Apply the principles of Asset-Based Community Development and Food Justice to address a community food security issue
  • Propose a course of action to address a community food security issue

3. Interact professionally with project team members and community stakeholders

  • Develop and disseminate knowledge that is useful to key stakeholders through oral and written communication

Instructions

The purpose of this document is to articulate the significance and intended outcomes of your project, and to represent visually how they relate to your proposed activities, outputs, indicators, and data sources and collection methods.

  • The following sections are adapted from questions from regional funding proposals
  • For further information on Outcome Measurement Frameworks and Project Measurement Plans, please see the following: Splash and Ripple

Title Page

Project Name:

Group #:

Project Partner Organization:

Project Partner Lead:

Date:

TA:

Statement of Authorship and Contribution:

[An authorship statement is an acknowledgment and record of who is doing what in your group. It is a way to make explicit to everyone that group work is expected to be shared equally. By the time your assignment is ready to be submitted, it will be clear who contributed what. And by the end of the term, you will have easy access to data indicating the overall distribution of efforts to group assignments by each member of your team.

So, what should it look like? We suggest the following, modify it to best suit your needs.:

Student 1 + 2 - Drafted, revised and edited section 1 and provided feedback on final version

Student 3 + 4 - Drafted, revised and edited section 2 and provided feedback on final version

Student 5 + 6 - Provided feedback on sections 1 + 2, integrated material, completed final edits to the document and were responsible for submitting to Canvas.]

Table of Contents

-      How to create a TOC

Key Words

-      List up to 10 keywords used in your proposal

-      Define keywords in appendix (with proper citations and page numbers when using direct quotes)

Background and Significance (1200-1500 words)

  • Who are you working with? o   What is the organization’s mission and values? o   With whom do they work, where, and how long have they been established?
  • What challenge or issue does your project aim to address? What have you been asked to do? Be specific.
  • Define community food security (use the Hamm and Bellows article) and how does your project connect to specific characteristics of community food security?
  • Define food justice (use the Hislop 2014 definition) and describe elements of your project that relate to food justice?
  • Search the academic literature for studies that have investigated similar projects. What can your group learn from these studies? What is comparable to your context? How is your project different?
  • Must use course readings and scholarly articles to describe and frame your project
  • Relevant terms must be defined (with citations!)

Defining the specific changes that the project is intended to achieve

Short-Term Outcomes:

A short-term change happens as a direct result of your project’s activities (e.g., isolated seniors’ connections to appropriate community services are increased). What is the intended short-term outcome that will result directly from your project’s activities (you will likely only have ONE short-term outcome for your project)?

Intermediate-Term Outcomes:

An intermediate or medium-term change happens after the program has ended, or 3-5 years after it started (e.g., Seniors’ level of engagement with the broader community is increased). What are the intended intermediate-term outcomes that will result directly from your project’s activities?

Long-Term Outcomes:

Describe the vision of the future your program/project is working towards (e.g., No seniors in the community are isolated). The long-term vision for the project should be very similar or the same as the long-term vision of the organization you are working with.

Modified Outcome Measurement Framework (Project “Logic Model”)

Outcome Measurement is a way of planning, managing and evaluating projects that encourages us to be clear about what our projects are DOING and what they are CHANGING. In the language of evaluation, this relationship is sometimes called the “theory of change” (Coyne & Cox, 2004, p. 1).

  • Short-Term Outcomes – What short-term outcome are you trying to achieve? Take the short-term outcomes listed in Question 2 and match them with the appropriate activity that will help you achieve that outcome. You will have many activities associated with each outcome.
  • Activities - Describe the planned project activities (e.g., deliver outreach services to isolated seniors)
  • Activity Timeline - Indicate times when activities are to be implemented (e.g., Week 3 – (Sept XX-XX))
  • Deliverables - List the measurable results directly generated as a result of each activity (e.g., updated food asset map, # of seniors reached; # of outreach calls made)
Outcome (short-term) Activity Activity Timeline Deliverables (outputs)
1. 1.    
2.    
3.    

Project Measurement (Evaluation) Plan

How will you know if your project activities are achieving the outcomes you had planned to achieve? Indicators point to the information that you need to gather to know if the project is making a difference. As the project progresses, assessing and measuring indicators can help you understand if adjustments need to be made to the plan. Indicators can be quantitative or qualitative, and ideally you will choose a combination.  

  • Short-Term Outcomes – from above
  • Indicators - List measurable items that indicate each outcome is being achieved (e.g., % of seniors who report accessing more community services)
  • Data Sources and Collection Methods - Describe how indicator information is collected, where it comes from, and when (e.g., Telephone surveys with senior clients, 6 months after they were initially contacted by program staff)
Outcomes Indicators Data Sources and Collection Methods
1.    
   
   

References

source: https://wiki.ubc.ca/Course:LFS350/Proposal_Report