The midterm paper made me think critically about something that I have spent a lot of time doing in the last two years. I was surprised how difficult it was to grasp the overall goal and summarize the goals of the organization I created. For my final paper, I am going to take this one step further; I am now armed with a more fundamental understanding of what I want the organization to accomplish and am going to write a proposal for a large grant.
The grant proposal will detail and explain the fundamental goals of Conservation Tech – including the philosophy of platform development for the ecological commons. It will also describe a projection into the future of expansion plans – including but not limited to: target school, strategic partners, potential projects, budgets, and brand growth techniques. Duke Conservation Tech will act as a case study – allowing opportunities to fault mistakes and demonstrate successes. This will include organizational structure, budgets, best-practices and two full scientific style papers of example projects.
The overall purpose of this final project is to not to apply for a specific grant but to assemble a critical mass of material such that applying to multiple grants in the future is possible. However, as part of the process, I will be attempting to create a pitch for the Schmidt Ocean Foundation (for one of the projects) and establish a non-profit that will be able to accept funds if a grant is awarded.
