30%, Group of 4 to 5. Pitch Week 14. Final plan due in finals week.
Technology Strategy Pitch
You are asking a real board for a real decision. The room in Week 14 is the leadership of an actual community partner, and your job is to earn either “yes, and here is the budget” or an honest “not yet, and here is why.”
The assignment
On the syllabus this is the Technology Implementation Plan; you deliver it as a strategy pitch. Groups are matched with partner organizations and the matches are announced in Week 5, when each group sends its introduction email. A one-page partner introduction memo is due in Week 6, and the intake conversation, where the group and the partner also agree on the Digital Story’s purpose, is completed by Week 8, outside class time. Over Weeks 9 to 13 your group runs a technology needs assessment with the partner (a formal instrument plus 2 to 3 stakeholder interviews, plus a one-page needs assessment memo due in Week 10), then recommends a course of action and defends it to the partner’s leadership.
Recommending against adoption, argued well, scores full marks. Boards are pitched shiny tools constantly; what they rarely get is an honest analysis of whether the tool fits their people, their budget, and their mission. In a course that argues both sides, intellectual honesty beats salesmanship, and the “when we would walk away” slide is where the grade is often won.
The three deliverables
All three go to the partner after the pitch as the final revised plan, delivered via Canvas in finals week, which is the course’s reciprocity commitment.
1. The pitch deck (10 to 15 slides, delivered live Week 14)
Use this arc. The four required elements are marked.
- Title, plus the ask in one sentence.
- The partner and who they serve, stated as the partner’s problem definition in their words.
- The problem or opportunity, with evidence.
- Needs assessment findings, part 1 (required element 1): the instrument you used (NTEN Tech Accelerate or TechSoup Digital Assessment) and what it showed.
- Needs assessment findings, part 2: what the stakeholder interviews added; evidence clearly separated from assumption.
- Proposed technology and fit: why this tool for this need.
- The honest slide: when we would not recommend this, and what would make us walk away.
- Ethics and data governance (required element 2): the sociotechnical protocol run on your own proposal; top risk named with its mitigation; data-handling norms.
- Accessibility plan (required element 3): concrete commitments. WCAG and Section 508, language access, disability access, device and bandwidth reality, plain language.
- Evaluation (required element 4): what success looks like, what you would measure, and how you would know it failed. Written for the stakeholder, since this is a decision aid and no board reads a stats plan.
- Budget, part 1: build cost and run cost.
- Budget, part 2: what it takes to sustain this to year five.
- Risks, and what we need from you.
- The ask, plus the one question you most want the board’s help on (this feeds the live feedback round).
- AI disclosure: how AI was used to produce the plan and how outputs were verified.
Every member speaks. Practice the handoffs; they are where dry runs fall apart.
The tool selection matrix
Slide 6 has a prerequisite: before recommending a tool, compare at least three candidates in a matrix. The winner and the reason it won become the slide; the full matrix goes in the deck appendix, because a board 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 | |||
| Fit to the partner’s actual capacity |
The privacy impact check
Slide 8 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.
2. The two-page executive summary (the leave-behind)
The executive summary is the same argument in prose and one table, for the decision-maker who will never sit through slides. Recommendation first. A board reads the ask before the analysis, so the order is: recommendation, problem, what we found, what we propose, what it costs, what success looks like, top risk and mitigation, and the ask. This document is also where the four required elements live in full sentences, so they cannot thin out into slide bullets.
Download the working skeleton: SIL503_executive_summary.docx
The first five lines of a strong executive summary
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 stays 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 does four things: 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.
3. The budget and resourcing plan (one page plus notes)
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. Or build the total up 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 fit the partner’s actual capacity, since staff time and maintenance, and never the sticker price, decide whether a tool survives its first year.
The four required elements
These are graded separately and must appear in both the deck and the executive summary.
| Element | Deck | Rubric weight |
|---|---|---|
| Technology needs assessment | Slides 4 to 5 | 15 |
| Ethical considerations and data governance | Slides 7 to 8 | 20 |
| Accessibility plan | Slide 9 | 15 |
| Evaluation metrics | Slide 10 | 15 |
Three structures that keep the pitch honest
The honest slide. Slide 7 states the conditions under which your own recommendation fails. Groups skip it at their peril: it carries much of the 20-point ethics criterion, and boards trust the pitch more after hearing it.
Two doors. The pitch 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 partner. If B wins the argument, pitch B.
The red-team board seat. Recruit another group, or anyone willing, to play a skeptical board 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 pitch, 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 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 required checkpoints anchor the early fieldwork: a one-page partner introduction memo, due Week 6, and a one-page needs assessment memo, due Week 10. Both are feedback-only; they do not add rubric points, and the pitch’s weights below are unchanged.
| When | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Week 5 | Groups matched with partner organizations; matches announced and each group’s introduction email sent |
| Week 6 | Partner introduction memo due: the organization and its mission, the group’s first hypothesis about the technology question, and the scheduled intake date |
| Week 8 | Funder grant teardown in the tech-industry lab, which feeds the exit and sustainability section; the partner intake conversation, where the Digital Story’s purpose is also agreed, is completed by this week, outside class time |
| Week 9 (launch) | Needs assessment launches with intake already completed; needs-assessment instrument drafted; interview protocol peer-red-teamed in lab |
| Week 10 | Needs assessment memo due: the chosen instrument, the stakeholder interview plan with scheduled dates, and the client journey map’s draft status |
| Weeks 9 to 12 | Fieldwork: 2 to 3 stakeholder interviews per group |
| Week 13 | Final pre-pitch consult in the Debate Lab 2 session; plan outline and metrics due; each group logs one concrete revision |
| Week 14 | Live pitch to partner leadership; structured feedback round |
| Finals week | Final revised plan (deck + executive summary + budget) delivered to the partner via Canvas |
Group grade, individual check. Every member speaks in the pitch, and a short confidential peer-contribution rating catches free-riding. Large gaps between a member’s contribution and the group grade get adjusted.
Rubric (100 points, scaled to 30%)
| Criterion | Points |
|---|---|
| Needs assessment: instrument plus interviews; evidence distinguished from assumption | 15 |
| Ethical considerations: protocol run on your own proposal; top risk and mitigation; the honest non-recommendation condition | 20 |
| Accessibility plan: concrete; WCAG/508, language, device, disability, plain language | 15 |
| Evaluation metrics: success, measures, failure signals; written for the stakeholder | 15 |
| Budget realism: total cost of ownership, sustainability line, a lower-cost alternative | 10 |
| Pitch delivery and stakeholder fluency: deck clarity, every member speaks, reads the room, handles the feedback round | 15 |
| Executive summary and AI disclosure: decision-ready two-pager, recommendation first; vendor and cost claims verified | 10 |
FAQ
What if our partner goes quiet? Tell the instructor after one week of silence; do not wait until Week 13. Partners are volunteers with real jobs, and gaps happen. The fallback is an instructor-provided case: a fully documented partner brief with the same requirements, so your grade never depends on someone else’s inbox.
Can we really recommend against the technology? Yes, and it can be the strongest possible pitch. A well-argued “not yet” with a Plan B the partner can afford is exactly what a board wants from a consultant. The rubric does not contain a single point for enthusiasm.
What if the board asks something we can’t answer? “We don’t know, and here is how we would find out” is a good answer, delivered calmly. Bluffing in front of a real board is the one move that damages both your grade and the partnership.
Who grades the pitch? Does the partner? The instructor grades. Partners are guests and thought partners; their reactions inform the feedback you use for the finals-week revision, and nothing else.
How locked is the 15-beat arc? The beats are a strong default, and slides 4 to 5 and 7 to 10 are effectively fixed because they carry the required elements and the honest slide. Merge or reorder the rest if your argument flows better; 10 to 15 slides total.
Vendor pricing is confusing or hidden. What do we do? That finding belongs in the pitch. Get 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 get caught, in class or in front of the board.