Here are the rubrics to help you write and evaluate your proposals.

Ask yourself the following review questions proposed by Tom Sant in his book
Persuasive Business Proposals:
1. Is the proposal too vague or abstract?
2. Are the facts accurate?
3. Are the recommendations supported by sufficient evidence, examples, and details?
4. Are there too many details without an overview or sense of perspective?
5. Is there a central and unified theme?
6. Are the parts arranged in a coherent, logical sequence?
7. Is there a close to each major section?
8. Are the sentences clear and readable?
9. Is the writing appropriate to the prospects expertise?
10. Are there mistakes in grammar, usage, spelling, names, dates, addresses, etc.?

Questions that the proposal reviewer may expect to find answered:

What is the exact scope of your work?
Are the specific goals clear?
Are the general goals clear?
How will this proposed idea solve our needs?
How does this proposal differentiate its idea?
What is the proposal companys mission statement?
Does the proposal demonstrate knowledge about the background, operations, and status of our
company?
Does the presented approach achieve the stated objectives of the RFP?
Does the proposal justify how it will achieve the evaluation objectives?
Does the proposal include unanticipated events which may result in a project overrun or an
expanded scope of work?
Has a specific management plan (broken down by task) for the period of performance been
included?
Is the proposed time reasonable?
Does the time element demonstrate the most efficient use of time and is it realistic?
Has the proposer supported his/her competency in this highly specialized area?
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 Has the offeror explained any statistical variance in the survey instruments?
What are the demographics of the target group?
Was the sample survey size adequate?
If appropriate, have site visits been adequately provided for throughout the period of performance?
Will the proposer provide periodic updates throughout the project? On what basis?
Are evaluation techniques included? Are they relevant and realistic?
Is a clear cost/benefit analysis provided?
Does the proposal identify which tasks in the study specific personnel will be assigned and for how
long?
Are the assigned personnel qualified by training and experience to successfully perform the tasks?
Is the amount of time to perform specific tasks realistic?
Is a contingency plan available?
Will any subcontracting be used? If so, to what extent?
Will the proposal preparer be one of the key personnel?
Are the facilities and equipment needed for successful completion of the study specified in the
proposal?
If subcontracting is necessary, who are the proposed subcontractors and what are their
qualifications?
Do all past experiences relate specifically to the requirements of the proposed study?
Were testimonials provided?
What reputation does the firm hold in the area of the proposed study?
Has the proposer received any professional honors because of performance in a specific
professional area?
Are statements of past performance worded in a clear way to easily identify what work was actually
performed?
Is the overall cost within our budget?
What is the relationship between the cost figures and equivalent items?
Are the personnel costs reasonable according to the tasks to be performed?
Are the appropriate personnel assigned to perform the appropriate tasks?
Have expenditures been set aside for subcontracting if necessary?
Has an adequate amount been set aside for research costs?
Have costs for development of instruments been included?
Does the travel seem reasonable when compared to the tasks to be accomplished?
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 If consultants or experts are included, is their daily rate reasonable?

What are the independent and dependent variables?
Will there be use of a control group?
Are any potential ethical issues involved?
How will the implementation process be monitored?
Who will monitor the progress?
Are there related areas that may need future investigation?
Were references provided?
Who are the key players in the business? What is their background?
What marketing and promotional strategies will be used?
What are the current economics of the proposal submitters company?
What suppliers will be used?
Are any legal issues involved?
What are potential problem areas with the proposed idea and plans for overcoming them?
What quality of products will be used?
See https://www.cfda.gov/?static=grants&s=generalinfo&mode=list&tabmode=list#two for the United
States General Services Administration requirements.
See www.fbo.gov for federal business opportunities.
See http://www.prattlibrary.org/locations/ssh/?id=3130#HowToFindGrants for a list of nonprofit grants for
which to write proposals.

Work Environment
Flextime
Perks for carpoolers
Combine sick days with Personal Affairs days

School Environment
Provide peer tutors
Incorporate year-round school
Fund student-run businesses

Community Environment
Install cameras at intersections
Remove (or install) parking meters
Fund a community-wide event
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An RFP is available at http://citl.indiana.edu/programs/grants/activeLearningGrants.php and my proposal

that was accepted is below.

Another proposal is available for a bid for restoration work on a home.

ACTIVE LEARNING GRANT PROPOSAL

Judy Steiner-Williams
Senior Faculty Lecturer


steinerj@indiana.edu (5-3271)

Kelley Business School

CPCSBusiness Communication

Communication House--105

Below are my course profile, opportunity purpose, implementation strategy, assessment techniques, and
colleague involvement plan for my Active Learning Grant request for Fall 2014.

Course Profile:
Enrollment/Frequency. C204, Business Communication, offers 32 sections each spring and fall semester
and an additional five sections during the summer. Because it is an intensive writing course, the enrollment
is limited to approximately 25 students per class. Total yearly enrollment is about 1,800. I teach a regular
three-class load each semester, with an occasional overload of a fourth session.
The students are generally sophomores who are direct admits to the Kelley Business School or hope to be
admitted. It is a required course for business students. Students from SPEA and Sports Management also
occasionally select the course.

Opportunity Purpose:
Want More Hands-on: Because the course is writing intensive with 100% of the focus on business
documentsemail, memos, letters, and reportsthe students must follow the writing process to write
successfully. Much of class time is devoted to explaining the steps and stages that must be followed and
illustrating examples of a variety of documents.
Even though students are required to bring a rough version of their first three individual documents to
class for some quick instructor and peer input, the students tend to offer no specific advice or incorrect
advice, and I am tasked with giving feedback on 25 documents during a portion of the class timeusually
resulting in spending under a minute on each document. This is certainly not enough time to analyze
documents thoroughly and give meaningful specific input. I encourage students to visit office hours for
additional help but few seize the opportunity.
The students then use the limited input to revise the documents out of class and submit them for a grade.
The documents are then returned with commentscomments that very few actually read nor do the
students attend office hours for a further discussion. Immediately, another type of document is discussed,
and the same process is followed.

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Routine and good news documents have certain characteristics; bad news and persuasive documents
have different characteristics; report writing yet another set of guidelines. Direct order vs. indirect order
and reader reaction, for example. Students often struggle making the transition from document type to
document type. So much information must be presented during class to prepare them for each writing
assignment that helping the students apply and fine-tune documents is limited or nonexistent. Time does
not allow for students to demonstrate carryover of learning on the same type of documents.
Need More In-class Interaction: This Active Learning Grant would allow course revision structured around
the three documents that are written. The revision would force me, in a sense, to rely more on making the
students responsible out of class for the theory and examining the examples, and allow more time in class
working with students individually on documents that are part of the individual grade and with teams for
team writing projects such as the formal, analytical business report.

Implementation Strategy:
Lecture and Textbook Availability Out of Class: Our department introduced an etext (Fall 2013 published
by IU PressI am one of the co-authors) that contains much of the lecture material I give in class.
However, I still am wedded to the concept of lecturingand expand in class on the text material of why
audience analysis, the writing process, and different orders must be considered and choices made based
on understanding the documents purpose.
Additionally, I recently recorded a 24-lesson Business Writing Fundamentals course for lynda.com
(available sometime Spring 2014 semester), which contains the majority of the lecture material I use in
class. IU students have free access to this resource. These two resources would sufficiently provide the
theoretical background, along with specific examples, that the students need to understand before
drafting their documents.
Process: A 5-10 minute reading quiz would be given as part of an individual grade at the beginning of
each class over the reading for the specific document type assigned.
Students would then be assigned a team of 3-4 members and given a business-writing prompt in class.
As a team, without any class discussion, they would be asked to draft a solution to the prompt. I would
be able to rotate among the 4 or 5 teams, listen to their discussions, look at their drafts, make notes of
problem theme areas, offer suggestions, and ask students to explain why they used a direct or indirect
order, where they incorporated reader benefit, and about other key principles they should know based on
their out-of-class reading from the etext and the lynda.com course. I could then further explain/provide
examples of the areas that need more discussion.
At the end of this one class period devoted to this interactive activity, the students would then be given a
similar prompt, be required out of class to individually prepare a planning form, and write a couple drafts
before the next class.
During class, the team members would read and evaluate their other members documents based on a
checklist I would provide. The members would then rank the individual documents
with reasons to support the ranking. Specific strong sentences with reader benefit or positive tone
and sentences with weak reader benefit or a negative tone would be noted so they can be discussed
specifically.

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As students are giving input and feedback, I will again be visiting each team and discussing and noting
their continuing concerns and uncertainties. Ill note confusion patterns, and use the last 15 minutes
of class time to discuss specific things that need to be applied before each student continues to revise
his/her document out of class. Ill select a couple strong documents and a couple with improvement
opportunities to look at in class during those 15 minutes (anonymously) and discuss any remaining
questions.
If necessary, Ill post additional examples on Canvas if a specific unclear concept emerges. Students can
refer to these as they continue to revise their documents. The next class period, each student will bring to
class a revised final document to turn in to be graded.
The current class structure allows no time for carryover of learning opportunities. Students have no
opportunity to show that they can apply what theyve learned to a similar document. Rather, a different
type of business document is presented. Having teams prepare a team practice document, interacting
with the teams to uncover areas that need more discussion or emphasis, and showing specifics of how to
re-word or re-organize the document before they prepare individual documents to be graded will allow for
practice and discussion that the current course structure does not allow.
Class Time and Material Requirements: 7 hours vs. 1 hours: This change to a more active learning
environment will result in a total of 6 class periods (each a 75-minute class period) (2 for each of the 3
documents) spent interacting with the students as teams, having students interact with each other, and
guiding them toward my expected outcome on specifics rather than on the current hurried, general
input I currently give. The current course structure allows for under a half class period to interact with the
students. Much can be accomplished in the additional six hours of in-class interaction.
I currently write my own prompts for the document situationseach takes approximately 4 hours. I
research the current issues and find real companies and peoples names to use in the fictitious prompts,
which means students have to research the company as part of the planning stage. The Business/SPEA
library sets up a library page for my course with links to articles and companies that will guide the students
in their understanding of the situation. Implementing a more active learning environment successfully
will require that I prepare two situations for each document rather than one for each: one the team will
practice and one graded individually.
This portion of the preparation will take approximately an additional 12-15 hours. A checklist will also
have to be devised to guide students in their evaluation of peers documents, and additional examples
will have to be prepared. I will need to specifically identify which segments of the etext and which of the
lynda.com lessons must be read and understood for each writing prompt. Reading questions from those
segments will also need to be prepared.

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Assessment Techniques:
Assessment techniques will include:
Comparing grade data on these specific documents with past semesters
Examining general quality of the documents submitted
Noting the percent of students with quality documents
Tracking the number of office visits
Comparing the grades of students on each team
Analyzing how the team document compared/contrasted with the individual documents from that
team
Encouraging a class discussion of overall effectiveness
Inviting former students, especially the C204 peer coaches*, to visit class and observe and then
provide feedback on the way I introduced the material and provided feedback in their class with the
more interactive method.
*Of the current 11 peer coaches for C204, five are my former students.
Even though those techniques have some overlap, each will show a segment of the impact of the
additional class time.

Sharing Results:
Under CPCS are the C204 course (Business Communication with the focus on business writing - 33
sections with 25 students each), C104 (Business Presentations with the focus on oral presentations three sections of 104 during the past year as overloads, or 47 sections with 24 students each), and the T
courses, T175 (24 sections with 50 students each) and T275 (28 sections with 50 students each), which are
professional development courses, and all of these are required for Kelley business students.
Our department has monthly department meetings (Dr. Sue Vargo is the department chair), and we are
always encouraged to share effective teaching practices with the entire faculty in our departmentthose
teaching 204, 104, and the T classes. Interactive methods are always being sought and discussions revolve
around how to tweak ideas for different classes.
Additionally, I have participated in a Kelley Business committee on flipped classrooms. We are asked
to share our experiences with that group. Also, the Association of Business Communication (ABC)
and National Communication Association (NCA) are professional groups in which I participate. Each
association has a yearly meeting that provides opportunities for faculty and business people to speak and
share teaching techniques and real world practices.

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Summary:
Being awarded this Active Learning Grant will provide me the opportunity to develop a more handson classroom technique to help insure that students are provided more time to practice and hone their
writing skills under my guidance with immediate feedback and the opportunity to ask questions in the
moment rather than struggling out of class. The assigned reading and the additional in-class discussion
will provide the necessary information. That information will, more importantly, be coupled with practice
and a carryover learning opportunity. This reframing will allow students to interact with each other, with
me, and with the material in a more meaningful way.
Thank you for considering my grant proposal.

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BUSINESS PROPOSAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Cost and Pricing Data 1

A. Summary of Proposed Costs 1

B. Breakdown of Proposed Estimated Costs 3
1. Materials and Supplies
7

2. Travel 9
3. Equipment 11

4. Consultants 13

5. Subcontracts 16
II. Cost and Budget Justification 17
A. Direct Costs 18

1. Labor-Hourly 20

2. Materials and Supplies
22

B. Indirect Costs

1. Travel 25
2. Equipment 29

3. Consultants 36
4. Subcontracts 50

5. Miscellaneous 52
III. Qualifications of Personnel 60

A. General Experience 63

B. Organizational Experience Related to the RFP 67

C. Performance History 70

D. Related Contracts 84
IV. Facilities and Resources 86

A. Computer Resources 89

B. Office Space 91

C. Financial Capacity 102
V. Subcontracting Plan 110
Attachments

A. Technicians Certifications 118

B. Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement 119

C. Annual Financial Report 120

D. Travel Policies 124

E. Subcontracting Plan 126
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