British Heart Foundation Marketing and Critical Path Analysis - Case Study Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Tutor :xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Title : Business Report / Individual Project Plan Institution : xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date :xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx @ 2012 Executive Summary This is the project plan of the sports competition event expected to raise funds for a charity. The aim is to raise more than £2500 for the charity and to encourage more people to donate and support the British Heart Foundation. Education and awareness creation on cardiovascular and heart disease alongside other BHF activities are some of the important things that will be done. Project planning has been boosted by the availability of the venue and the money to be used in the event. The options considered for the project included the activities to be scheduled, institutions and organizations to be invited and the total budget. Constraints to the event are unpredictable weather and its coinciding with the London Olympics which may reduce attendance since those expected to attend the sports competition may be busy planning or training for their participation in the Olympics. Marketing of the event will be done through print media and the internet since these are expected to reach more people and their costs fall within the funds allocated to marketing in the budget of the competition. A total of fifteen sports will be conducted in the 5 days of the competition. Everything has been well planned for and the event is expected to be a great success. Table of Contents Executive Summary………………………………………………………………...2 Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………3 Introduction………………………………………………………………………….4 Background………………………………………………………………………….5 Business Case………………………………………………………………………7 Marketing…………………………………………………………………………….8 Network Diagram and Critical Path Analysis……………………………………10 Work Breakdown Structure……………………………………………………….12 Gantt chart ………………………………………………………………………….12 Conclusions………………………………………………………………………...12 References………………………………………………………………………….14 Individual project plan Introduction This paper presents a report of the project planned to raise as many funds as possible for a charity. The project is a sports competition event that will be held at the University in July 2012. Within our society there are many needy people that require the charity of other individuals for them to survive. Taking care of the sick is a good example of a course that is supported by charitable organizations. The money to be raised in the sports competition is meant to be channeled into supporting the activities of a charity organization taking care of the heart. The purpose and objectives of this report is to present the plan that will be used to organize the sports competition. The charity to be supported is the British heart foundation which is involved in matters related to heart treatment. This charity has recently received overwhelming pressure from those affected by heart diseases and therefore is having financial problems since it has many activities to fund. Cases of heart diseases in people seem to be on the rise and therefore a lot of money is needed to support the education, research and awareness creation about the diseases (British Heart Foundation 2011). This project is therefore very important since it is expected to raise the money that will see this charity come out of its current financial problems. The report will cover a number of sections among them the background to the British Heart Foundation, the business case which will discuss the objectives of the report, the options considered, Expected Benefits, Key milestones, Costs, Net Benefits and the Potential Risks and Constraints. It will also feature marketing, work break down structure, Network Diagram and Critical Path Analysis, Gantt chart and finally the conclusion. The information to be included in the report will be collected through a desk top research on the matters involved. Information about the charity; the British Heart Foundation and the preparation for the sports competition will be obtained from secondary sources such as journals, books and the internet (Carmona, Burgess, Badenhorst 2009 pp. 14). Background The British Heart Foundation (BHF) works as a charity organization based in Britain. It is involved in funding education, research, care and campaigns on awareness about the prevention of heart diseases in people (British Heart Foundation 2011). The British Heart Foundation was established in 1961 through the efforts of certain medical professionals that were disturbed by the rise in deaths because of cardiovascular disease. They were interested in funding extra research for the diagnosis, causes, treatment and the prevention of circulatory and heart disease. Their interest was to fund more research in to the treatment, diagnosis, causes and prevention of circulatory and heart disease. BHF is a big authority and funder of cardiovascular research, care and education and the organization depends majorly on donations for meeting its aims (British Heart Foundation 2011). For it to increase its impact and maximize its income BHF works closely with other organizations to control disability and premature death from cardiovascular disease. The British Heart Foundation is focused on 5 cardiovascular health areas. It pioneers research in heart disease causes and better methods of diagnosis, prevention and treatment. BHF provides important information that helps people to lower the risk of heart disease in their lives. It campaigns by lobbying the government to enact better policies that can reduce the chances of getting circulatory and heart disease (British Heart Foundation 2011). BHF gives the best care standards and support to patients besides reducing inequalities in heart disease levels in the United Kingdom. In the year 2010 BHF used 57% of their income to fund research while 43% was channeled into prevention. BHF channeled a net of £48.4 million into research. Care and prevention and funding of the activities in health care professionals they spend £2.5 million and £1.4 million for placing defibrillators where they are needed and the production of resources for heart health for groups of all ages. They also spend 4 million pounds on 4 new huge programs as well as 10 cluster projects in the hearty lives initiative. 0.5 Million pounds was also invested in Heart information series (British Heart Foundation 2011). Business Case The sports competition to be organized using this project plan is very important. As stated above it is expected to raise funds that will be channeled into supporting the charity known as the British Heart Foundation. This charity is involved in a lot of important activities in the UK that need a lot of money. The sports competition has been picked as the most effective way that can be used to raise the amount of money needed to support the British Heart Foundation (Cohn 2006 pp. 78). The BHF is launching into other new areas that are bound and are expected to be more expensive that it may not be easy to work with the usual sources of funds. Previously the foundation has been focusing all its efforts on research funding, education and care. A lot of investments have gone into this in the past. However new plans have been conceived and the organization hopes to diversify its activities by expanding its care, education and research programs to accommodate more needs from those affected by heart and cardiovascular disease either directly or indirectly. At the moment there are 260 British Heart Foundation nurses taking care of patients in the whole of UK. This number needs to be doubled owing to the rise in cases of heart and cardiovascular disease. There exist more than 1,620 Heartstart United Kingdom schemes for educating people on what they should do in different situations of emergency (Haugan 2002 pp. 43). Over 1.2 million people have gone through training in the community and in schools courtesy of Heartstart UK. With increasing needs the foundation has planned to increase the number of these schemes to about 3000 to cover other places within the UK that had not been covered (British Heart Foundation 2011).The 1.2 million mark of people trained through Heartstart should be surpassed by far in a period of one year and all this depends on the amount of money that will be available to carter for all the expenses to be incurred. Statistics show that each year 4,600 babies born inside the United Kingdom have a congenital heart defect. This is an indication of how much load is added to the current burden each year since all these children with heart complications must receive good care (Cohn 2006 pp. 91). Aims and Objectives The major aim of this project is to raise as much money as possible to support the British Heart Foundation in its expansion plans. The sports competition is expected to raise a maximum of £2500 which will be channeled in totality into the charity plus any surplus from the budget. The objectives of the project are: To help the British Heart foundation raise more than one third of its expansion budget To create awareness about the financial need of the charity involved. This is expected to stimulate other similar events to raise more money for the a similar course as well as to pass word to donors who may be willing to donate to the charity To use the sports competition as an opportunity to help the organization spread awareness and education on matters related to heart and cardiovascular disease Options considered A number of options for carrying out this project were placed on the table and the selection of the best option done by way of the weighted scoring method. The procedure involved the use of an excel spread sheet on which the requirements were listed, numerical priority entered and then the options to be compared were recorded (Rowe 2007 pp. 155). In the weighted score model the options debated upon included the total amount to be spend, the amount of people or sportsmen to be invited including the particular organizations and institutions to be invited, the number and type of events to feature in the competition (Hullet 2011 pp. 115). Expected Benefits First and foremost it is expected that the event will raise enough money that will boost greatly the British Heart Foundation kitty. It is also expected that the event will become a forum through which the charity will advertise itself to would be donors and sponsors and also create awareness besides educating people on matters of cardiovascular and heart health. Key milestones The major milestones in the planning of the project are to have the venue already allocated for the project and the funds needed for organizing the sports competition. The university will serve as the venue for the sports competition. Money to the tune of £1200 has already been set aside for the event. These two are important achievements and as per the moment there is a level of assurance that the event will succeed. It is projected that the event will not cost more than £1200 pounds and therefore there is no fear of the expenditure spilling over the money available (Wysocki 2011 pp210). Potential Risks and Constraints Risks and constraints that can be encountered include the unfavorable weather since the event is an out door one and the fear that the invited participants may not show up. The timing of the event almost coincides with the London Olympic Games and this may mean that some of those expected to take part in this event may be busy in their training or preparations for the Olympics. Since sports involve a lot of risky actions and activities the possibility of injuries on the material day cannot be ruled out. Therefore proper preparations are going to be done so that in case of such eventualities the injured can easily be attended to (Kezner 2009 pp. 214). Marketing Marketing of the event is very important and it will be done through the local print media and the internet. This has been arrived at considering the costs and level of publicity. Social media is expected to play a major role. The marketing will begin immediately the planning is over so that people can have enough time to prepare for the competition (Lewis 2010 pp. 167). Critical Path Analysis A total of fifteen events will feature in the competition. These are: Athletics, badminton, basketball, boxing, archery, football, handball, hockey, table tennis, swimming, taekwondo, tennis, weight lifting, wrestling, volley ball. Each of the activities has been assigned an equal amount of money of 65 pounds except for football, swimming, hockey, weight lifting and boxing which have been allocated 40 pounds each above the others. Activity Predecessor Duration a. Planning none 1 week b. Invitations to participants a 2 days c. Purchasing equipment none 6 days d. Marketing a 2 months e. Settling payments c 1 week f. Inviting other guests b 3 days g. Rehearsals e 1 week h. The competition g 5 days I. Opening ceremony e 0.5 days j. Closing ceremony h 1 day Appendix 2: The Action plan or Gantt chart Activity Dates (April 10 - 25) 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Planning Invitations to participants Purchasing equipment Marketing Settling payments Inviting other guests Rehearsals The competition Opening ceremony Closing ceremony The activities that have been scheduled to take place before the real competition follow each other systematically but because of time and for purposes of convenience some of them have been scheduled to overlap. This is important since the time period before the competition is limited to only 2 months. The critical path is formed by those activities that are expected to take the longest time. This is definitely the marketing part which is expected to take the entire period of 2 months starting now to the last day of the competition (Meredith, Mantel 2011 pp. 87). Work Breakdown Structure/ network diagram Conclusion The report has presented the planning of a project for raising money for the British Heart Foundation. The planning has laid down all the preparations necessary for the event. The event has the major aim of raising over £ 2500 for the charity besides the objectives of creating awareness for heart and cardiovascular disease, educating people on the same and appealing more donor funding form other quarters. The project has the money ready, the venue and the budget. The expectation is that all the objectives will be achieved although the risks of low attendance and unfavorable weather have been cited as possible constraints. Nevertheless the project is set and marketing is expected to kick off through local print media and the internet. Based on what has been achieved through the planning process, it is expected that the aim and objectives of this competition will be met without much trouble. This will include the creation of awareness to the society about the activities of the British Heart Foundation. Bibliography British Heart Foundation (2011) (Online), Available at http://www.bhf.org.uk/ Retrieved April 29 2012 Carmona M, Burgess N, Badenhorst S.M (2009) Planning through projects: Moving from master planning to strategic planning; John Wiley & Sons Grisham T.W (2011) International project management: Leadership in complex environments; Sage Haugan G. (2002) Project planning and scheduling; Oxford University Press Hullet D. (2011) Integrated Cost schedule risk analysis, Sage Kezner H. (2009) Project Management: A systems Approach to planning scheduling; John Wiley & Sons Lewis P.J (2010) Project planning, scheduling and control: Bringing projects in on time and on budget; McGraw Hill Professional Meredith J.R, Mantel J.M (2011) Project management: A managerial approach; Oxford Rowe S. (2007) Project management for small projects, McGraw Hill Professional Wysocki R.K (2011) Effective project management: Traditional, Agile Extreme, Cengage Learning Read More