With this Assignment.

NOTE:

Watch the recorded webinar, "Powerful Strategies for Writing Persuasive & Profitable Sales Letters, Ads, & Proposals." It contains important information and strategies that will help you write a more persuasive proposal, and will help you understand persuasive strategies in general so you can use them in future documents, speeches, presentations, etc. There is also a section toward the end called "How to Create a Reader-Centered Document" that includes information about writing concise sentences, reducing/eliminating passive construction, using Plain English, reducing sentence length, formatting your document with headings, bullets, and white space, and other writing strategies that will help your writing be clear, concise, correct, and centered on the reader's needs rather than the writer's. When I grade your papers in this class, I will assume that you have read and understand these concepts and have incorporated them into your written documents.

Please forgive the choppy beginning and ending, as this webinar was originally recorded for my local chamber of commerce and included a promotion for my personal business website at the beginning and ending--these sections have been removed.

NOTE #2: This is the first of three assignments that will all be about the same topic. The other two will be the Progress Report  and the Final Report.

NOTE #3: You must write about a REAL LIFE scenario in which you are intimately involved. See sample topics below. Any paper written about a fake or generic situation, or using fake names of the organization or employees or using made-up statistics, quotations, or sources will receive an automatic "F." If you need help choosing a topic, please send me an email,lawrence.clark@faculty.umuc.edu BEFORE submitting your proposal and I will help you.

Next, write a 500-700 word memorandum addressed to Dr. Clark:
(1) describing an actual, real life problem in your office, school, church, or volunteer organization that you do not have the authority to correct,

(2) identifying the specific decision maker (by name and position) who can act on a researched report you propose to write (as Paper 6--see Syllabus for description of Paper 6 BEFORE writing this paper),

(3) your proposed solution,

(4) a GANTT Chart depicting the timing of your expected progress on the problem-solving researched proposal you are asking permission to pursue as the final paper in this course. Include only the timeline for your research and writing of the report; do not include a timeline for implementing your recommendations in the future. Be sure to introduce the timeline to your reader with a brief paragraph; also, include the Gantt chart in the body of the memo, not at the end or as a separate attachment.

(5) including a list in MLA Works Cited format of at least three of your required eight specific sources (not just a litany of generic excuses such as, "I plan to use articles from the newspaper and the web"), and Use the italicized words/phrases in the numbered list above as the headings in the body of this memorandum to me. As always, you will also include an introduction paragraph explaining why you are writing, and a conclusion with a clear call to action or request; be sure to include a heading for these sections as well.

The issue or problem you address should be a LOCAL problem for which your report might actually do some good in your workplace, school, church, educational institution, non-profit organization, etc. You cannot solve the national debt crisis or issues such as immigration, abortion, or climate change with a brief class project. Again, look around you and find a LOCAL problem to research and analyze and propose a solution for.