Last week the current Management Academy teams presented their feasibility plans in a session that includes brief presentations and Q & A. This session brings out the meaning of “teamwork” for the Management Academy – it is clear at times like this that we’re all on the team: everyone in that room was there to understand the plans and help make each a better final product. We were lucky, too, to have two special guests: Dorothy Cilenti, a former North Carolina local public health director who is currently Deputy Director for Operations and Management at the NC Institute for Public Health, and Rosemary Summers, current Orange County Health Director.
One of the teams is proposing a program called “Fun & Fit,” which will be a summer day camp created to address childhood obesity. A structured camp for children between the ages of five and 14, “Fun & Fit” will incorporate play, cooking, field trips, swimming, sports, and gardening to encourage children to be active and make healthy food choices. It will also contain evening classes for parents and children on nutrition and health. The partners include the county school system, a local aquatics center, Smart Start, the local 4-H chapter, and the local campus of the state university, which will provide student interns to work with the children. It will be an eight-week program during the summer, with follow-up during the school year. The program will be subsidized through the Department of Social Services.
What are some of the challenges for a project like this? Some questions raised had to do with medical participation. Dr. Summers asked who would provide on-site medical supervision? And, perhaps it could be a prescription program, with doctors “prescribing” it for overweight or at-risk children. Would that help it be covered by insurance? Would that help the program planners target the children who would most need it? Related to targeting children, another question was raised about the program’s marketing: how would such a program be marketed so as to avoid stigmatizing children who attend? The team answered that it plans to target all children and avoid a stigma, which led one attendee to suggest that then they might only get the concerned parents whose children are not necessarily overweight or at risk, those who are already thinking about healthy behaviors and choices. The group ended by brainstorming ideas for encouraging participation – they could use active video games to “meet the kids where they are” – even offering such games as prizes for meeting healthy eating or activity goals. That team might have to go find another partner – maybe a video game company or store – who would donate things that could be incentives for the children.
Other challenges might be regulatory issues. Studies show that regulatory issues are the second most common reason given by MAPH students for plans not getting off the ground. Also, public health planners often neglect to “think like a business” when it comes to marketing. Marketing for a program like this might target doctors, parents, children themselves, and schools, and the marketing plan would have to comprise more than just public service announcements. There are a lot of competitors for children’s time in the summer.
What do you think? Can you -- our Community of Practice -- think of other ideas that would help this team make "Fun & Fit" the best plan it could be?
-- Anne
A business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals.
Showing posts with label feasibility planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feasibility planning. Show all posts
Feasibility Plans
The current MAPH scholars are here this week for their second on-site session. This is the session at which (among a lot of other things) they present their feasibility plans to the group and get feedback. Their ideas have come a long way from the first tentative ideas that were batted about in July. Any former scholars in our audience can well remember the feeling of free fall that comes that first week when you realize this is a long, sometimes difficult process of brainstorming, fact-finding, going back to the drawing board, and work, work, work. It’s exciting (like an epiphany) and yet terrifying (like a tsunami) (and I promise not to write any more about that word, this week at least!).
In conversations the last couple of days I’ve been asking these scholars – “what do you want to see more of in the book?” – and to a person, they all said, “We need a good example of a feasibility plan!” I have a few answers to that request:
1. Business plan coaches Pamela Santos and Catherine McClain do not want us giving out sample feasibility plans in the fear that you’ll see one of these imperfect plans and model your own after it. Plus, plans are so different that there is no perfect plan that would work across the board. We say that in the book, and it’s true: no one plan will work for everything, so it’s better to work with the parts and make your own plan. And, like your teachers told you in high school: there is value to figuring it out for yourselves.
2. The feasibility seems HUGE to you right this minute because it’s what you’ve been working on to present here this week. But it is a means to an end. After this session you will not go back and revise your feasibility plan: it’ll be time to write your business plan!
3. If you still insist that you need a model, on the member’s site of the MAPH web site (www.maph.unc.edu/members), under “Business Plan Project” there is a link to “Feasibility Plan Details,” where you can get very detailed descriptions of the parts of a feasibility plan with examples from past plans. Not one big plan from start to finish, but a close description of what the parts would consist of. I hope you were pointed in that direction when you began the program, but if not, there it is, better late than never. For those of you who are not in the Management Academy program, I’ll see about getting that link available to you if I hear back from you that you want it.
4. One of the readers of our book in manuscript said the feasibility chapter should have come first, because it is what you do first. We put it where it is because even though you do it first, you do need to know what the parts of the business plan are before you do it. And, again, it’s a means to an end. When you’ve done your business plan you forget about the feasibility plan. However, we can revise that chapter, move it, bulk it up for the new edition (if we’re lucky enough to get to do one) if we hear enough feedback that indicates that would be what you, our audience, wants. So let us know!
OK. I'll write more soon about the plans that were presented this week. And perhaps Monecia will give us an update "From the Director" --
-- Anne Menkens
In conversations the last couple of days I’ve been asking these scholars – “what do you want to see more of in the book?” – and to a person, they all said, “We need a good example of a feasibility plan!” I have a few answers to that request:
1. Business plan coaches Pamela Santos and Catherine McClain do not want us giving out sample feasibility plans in the fear that you’ll see one of these imperfect plans and model your own after it. Plus, plans are so different that there is no perfect plan that would work across the board. We say that in the book, and it’s true: no one plan will work for everything, so it’s better to work with the parts and make your own plan. And, like your teachers told you in high school: there is value to figuring it out for yourselves.
2. The feasibility seems HUGE to you right this minute because it’s what you’ve been working on to present here this week. But it is a means to an end. After this session you will not go back and revise your feasibility plan: it’ll be time to write your business plan!
3. If you still insist that you need a model, on the member’s site of the MAPH web site (www.maph.unc.edu/members), under “Business Plan Project” there is a link to “Feasibility Plan Details,” where you can get very detailed descriptions of the parts of a feasibility plan with examples from past plans. Not one big plan from start to finish, but a close description of what the parts would consist of. I hope you were pointed in that direction when you began the program, but if not, there it is, better late than never. For those of you who are not in the Management Academy program, I’ll see about getting that link available to you if I hear back from you that you want it.
4. One of the readers of our book in manuscript said the feasibility chapter should have come first, because it is what you do first. We put it where it is because even though you do it first, you do need to know what the parts of the business plan are before you do it. And, again, it’s a means to an end. When you’ve done your business plan you forget about the feasibility plan. However, we can revise that chapter, move it, bulk it up for the new edition (if we’re lucky enough to get to do one) if we hear enough feedback that indicates that would be what you, our audience, wants. So let us know!
OK. I'll write more soon about the plans that were presented this week. And perhaps Monecia will give us an update "From the Director" --
-- Anne Menkens
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