25%, Pairs. Capacity brief Week 11. Briefing Week 13. Memo due in finals week.
Technology Strategy Pitch
You have one interview with one organization about a technology decision it is facing, and you write the memo a consultant would leave behind.
Assignment
On the syllabus this is the Technology Implementation Plan; you deliver it as a consultant memo and an eight-minute briefing, working in pairs. Each pair conducts one interview with one person who knows how the work in that organization is organized, so the protocol you build in Week 9 has to earn the hour it asks for.
There are two routes to an organization, and either is acceptable. Bring your own: an employer, a board you serve on, an organization you already know, or ask me and I will recommend one. Tell me which by Week 6 either way, because a recommendation takes time to arrange and a self-found organization requires only a brief check for suitability.
Recommending against adoption, argued well, scores full marks. Boards are pitched shiny tools constantly and rarely receive an honest analysis of whether the tool matches their people, their budget, and their mission. In a course that argues both sides, intellectual honesty beats salesmanship, and the section on when you would walk away is where the grade is often won.
Three deliverables
The capacity brief is graded in Week 11 and is worth 15 of the assignment’s 100 points, the organization named after Week 6 is worth 5, and the memo and the briefing account for the other 80. Splitting it that way puts a real deadline on the interview, which otherwise drifts to the last possible week, and it prevents the whole assignment from resting on one submission in finals week.
1. Capacity brief, due Week 11
One page with four parts and a date, and most of it is work the Week 9 lab already produced.
- The capacity assessment, in the four parts the lab produced: who owns technology, what the data is held in, which of the minimum safeguards are in place, and what the current tools cost to maintain. Attach the instrument’s section scores.
- The interview, either done, with the date and the role of the person you spoke with, or scheduled, with the date it is booked for. A brief that names neither is incomplete.
- The question the memo will answer, in one sentence, phrased so that “no” is a possible answer.
- What one hour could not establish. Graded on honesty, and naming a real gap here costs you nothing.
The brief is not a draft of the memo and does not need a recommendation. It exists so the work is underway while there is still time to change course.
Memo and briefing
The memo is the graded artifact and the briefing is how you deliver it to a room. Neither is owed to the organization as a course requirement. Sending them the memo afterward is a good idea and it is between you and them.
2. Consultant memo
Four pages plus appendices, addressed to the person who could actually make this decision. Recommendation first. A decision-maker reads the ask before the analysis, so the order is recommendation, question, what you found, what you propose, what it costs, what success looks like, and what would change your answer.
Download the working skeleton: SIL503_executive_summary.docx
The arc, with the four required elements marked.
- The recommendation, one paragraph, ending in an ask the reader can act on.
- The organization and the question, stated as their problem definition in their words.
- Capacity assessment (required element 1): what the readiness self-check returned, on whichever published instrument it routed you to, and what the interview added. Evidence separated from assumption throughout, and the parts you could not establish in one hour named as such.
- The option set: what you considered and why the recommendation beats the alternative. The tool selection matrix is placed in an appendix and the memo cites it.
- Ethics and data governance (required element 2): the sociotechnical protocol run on your own proposal, the top risk named with its mitigation, the data-handling norms, and the AI use policy the recommendation would oblige them to write.
- Accessibility plan (required element 3): concrete commitments against WCAG and Section 508, plus language access, disability access, device and bandwidth reality, and plain language.
- Evaluation (required element 4): what success looks like, what you would measure, and how you would know it failed. Written for the decision-maker, since no board reads a statistics plan.
- Cost: the three-year table, the sustainability line, and one lower-cost alternative priced the same way.
- The honest section: the conditions under which you would not recommend this, and what would make you walk away.
- AI disclosure: how AI was used to produce the memo and how the outputs were verified.
Tool selection matrix
Section 4 has a prerequisite: before recommending a tool, compare at least three candidates in a matrix. The winner and the reason it won belong in the memo; the full matrix is placed in an appendix, because a reader will ask what else you looked at. The criteria rows are fixed:
Tool selection matrix
| Criterion | Candidate A | Candidate B | Candidate C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total cost over three years | |||
| Accessibility (WCAG conformance, language support) | |||
| Data practices (where data lives, who can see it, exit and export) | |||
| Vendor lock-in | |||
| Match to the organization’s actual capacity |
Privacy impact check
Section 5 includes a lightweight privacy impact check, run as a checklist on your proposed tool:
- The data the tool touches.
- Whose data it is.
- The consent basis.
- Where it is stored, and for how long.
- Who it is shared with.
- The realistic worst case for the most vulnerable person in the data.
- The mitigation for that worst case.
The privacy check applies Week 7’s data sovereignty material to your own proposal. The people in the data have a claim on how it is collected, stored, and shared, and the check makes that claim concrete before the board asks.
First five lines of the memo
For a fictional small food pantry considering an SMS reminder system:
Recommendation: adopt a text-message reminder system for pantry pickup slots, as a 90-day pilot, before any multi-year contract. Westside Pantry misses roughly one in five scheduled pickups, and staff spend most of Friday calling no-shows. The tool itself costs $29 a month; the honest cost is the roughly two staff hours a week to run it, and we have budgeted both. Top risk: clients who share phones or change numbers will miss reminders, so the paper sign-in list remains as a parallel path. The ask: approve the pilot, name one staff owner, and review it against our three success measures in January.
A strong summary in this genre meets four conditions: the recommendation comes first, the cost line is honest, the top risk arrives with its mitigation, and the ask is something a board can actually vote on.
Cost table
The budget is a real total-cost-of-ownership table, since the sticker price is never the cost. Download the working workbook, with a three-year table, the sustainability notes, and a second sheet for the lower-cost alternative: SIL503_tco_budget.xlsx. The total can also be built in the browser first with the total-cost-of-ownership calculator, which shows the sticker price as a fraction of the real cost.
The skeleton:
Budget skeleton
| Line item | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Notes / source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| One-time build or setup | vendor quote, verified against a primary source | |||
| Licenses and subscriptions | per-seat or flat; note the renewal terms | |||
| Hosting and infrastructure | ||||
| Staff time (hours or FTE) | who, doing what; usually the biggest line | |||
| Training | initial plus refresher | |||
| Accessibility costs | captioning, translation, assistive tech | |||
| Maintenance and support | ||||
| Total cost of ownership |
Below the table, two required notes: a sustainability line (who owns this in year five, and what happens if the grant ends) and at least one lower-cost or no-cost alternative, priced the same way. The plan has to match the organization’s actual capacity, since staff time and maintenance, and never the sticker price, decide whether a tool survives its first year.
3. Briefing
Eight minutes in class in Week 13, both of you speaking, followed by a feedback round run on the course’s response protocol. No deck is required. Bring the memo, and at most five slides if a picture does something prose cannot. Close on the one question you most want the room’s help with, because that question is what the feedback round works on.
The room is your classmates and me, not a board, so the briefing is judged on whether a person who has not read the memo could repeat your recommendation and your top risk afterward.
Four required elements
These are graded separately and have to appear in the memo, and the briefing covers as many of them as eight minutes allows.
| Element | Memo section | Rubric weight |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity assessment | 3 | 10, plus the 15 on the Week 11 brief |
| Ethical considerations and data governance | 5 | 15 |
| Accessibility plan | 6 | 10 |
| Evaluation metrics | 7 | 10 |
Structures for an honest pitch
The honest section. Section 9 states the conditions under which your own recommendation fails. Skipping it is expensive, since it accounts for much of the 20-point ethics criterion, and a reader trusts the rest of the memo more after reading it.
Plan A and Plan B. The memo presents Plan A (the technology) and a credible Plan B (a lower-tech or no-tech way to meet the same need), and argues why A beats B for this organization. If B wins the argument, recommend B.
The red-team reader. Recruit another pair, or anyone willing, to read the draft as a skeptical decision-maker and put two hard questions to you: whether the budget is sustainable, and who bears the risk if the tool fails. Run a compressed version of the briefing, let them push, and take notes without rebutting. Schedule this yourselves before Dec 9; it is ungraded, but handling the hard question well when it returns at the live pitch is graded under pitch delivery.
Examples worth studying
Real, public materials in this genre:
- Fast Forward Demo Day 2024 and Fast Forward Demo Day 2025 (full replays, ~60 to 70 min; 62-second trailer).
- Strategic technology planning template for nonprofits (Tech Impact and TAG, 2022).
- Shaker Heights Public Library technology plan, 2023 to 2025.
- City of Madison IT strategic plan, 2021 to 2023.
- Comparing software costs in your nonprofit (LiveImpact).
- A nonprofit board report template that works (Joan Garry).
Milestones
Two checkpoints fall before the memo. The organization has to be named in Week 6, worth 5 of the 100 points, and the deadline exists so a recommendation has time to be arranged if you want one. The capacity brief is due in Week 11 and is graded, 15 of the 100 points.
| When | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Week 6 | Organization named: either the one you bring, with a sentence on your relationship to it, or a request for a recommendation |
| Week 8 | Funder grant teardown in the tech-industry lab, which feeds the cost and sustainability section |
| Week 9 (launch) | Capacity assessment run in lab on the readiness self-check; interview protocol drafted from the weakest two sections and peer-red-teamed |
| Weeks 9 to 11 | The interview happens, outside class time, one per pair |
| Week 11 | Capacity brief due, 15 of the 100 points |
| Week 12 | Pre-briefing consult in the Debate Lab 2 session; memo outline and evaluation metrics due; each pair logs one concrete revision |
| Week 13 | Briefing in class; feedback round |
| Finals week | Memo due via Canvas |
Pair grade, individual check. Both of you speak in the briefing, and a short confidential peer-contribution note catches a lopsided split. A large gap between one person’s contribution and the pair grade is adjusted.
Rubric (100 points, scaled to 25%)
Twenty of the hundred are awarded before the last month of term, at the two points where the work can still be rescued.
Organization named, due the Tuesday after Week 6 (5 points)
| Criterion | Points |
|---|---|
| An organization and a named person to interview, or an honest account of what is blocking it and what you are doing about that | 5 |
Capacity brief, due Week 11 (15 points)
| Criterion | Points |
|---|---|
| The four-part assessment, the interview done or booked with a date, the question the memo will answer, and an honest account of what an hour could not establish | 15 |
Memo and briefing, due Week 13 and finals week (80 points)
| Criterion | Points |
|---|---|
| Capacity assessment in the memo: what the interview added to the brief; evidence distinguished from assumption | 10 |
| Ethical considerations: protocol run on your own proposal; top risk and mitigation; the honest non-recommendation condition | 15 |
| Accessibility plan: concrete; WCAG/508, language, device, disability, plain language | 10 |
| Evaluation metrics: success, measures, failure signals; written for the decision-maker | 10 |
| Budget realism: total cost of ownership, sustainability line, a lower-cost alternative | 10 |
| Briefing: both speak, a listener who has not read the memo can repeat the recommendation and the top risk, handles the feedback round | 15 |
| Memo craft and AI disclosure: decision-ready, recommendation first; vendor and cost claims verified | 10 |
FAQ
What if the organization goes quiet? Tell me after one week of silence; do not wait until Week 12. The people you are asking have real jobs and gaps happen. The fallback is an instructor-provided case, a fully documented brief with the same requirements, so your grade never depends on someone else’s inbox.
Can we interview more than one person? The assignment requires one and grades one. If a second conversation falls into your lap, use it and say so in the memo, but do not build the plan around interviews you have not yet secured.
Can both of us interview the same person together? Yes, and that is the recommended arrangement: one asks, one takes notes, following the Week 9 method, with the memo saying who did which.
Can we really recommend against the technology? Yes, and it can be the strongest possible memo. A well-argued “not yet” with a Plan B the organization can afford is what a decision-maker wants from a consultant, and no rubric row awards points for enthusiasm.
What if the room asks something we cannot answer? “We don’t know, and here is how we would find out” is a good answer, delivered calmly. Bluffing is the one move that costs you more than the gap it covers.
Who grades this? I do. The organization you interviewed has no role in the grade and never sees the rubric.
How locked is the ten-section arc? Sections 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 9 are fixed, because they contain the recommendation, the four required elements, and the honest section. Merge or reorder the rest if the argument reads better that way, inside four pages.
Vendor pricing is confusing or hidden. What do we do? That finding has a place in the pitch. Obtain the best verified figure you can (a quote, a published price page, a comparable org’s actuals), cite it, and flag the uncertainty in the budget notes. An unverifiable price presented as fact will be caught, in class or in front of the board.