¶ … Academy Sports + Outdoors
Project Charter
The project charter for this plan, "Operation Midnight Basketball" for Academy Sports + Outdoors, is provided below.
Identification:
The official name of this project is "Operation Midnight Basketball" to be implemented by Academy Sports + Outdoors as described below.
Today, Academy Sports + Outdoors (hereinafter alternatively "Academy" or "the company") is a leading retailers in the sports, outdoor and lifestyle industry offering a wide range of high quality fishing, hunting, and other outdoor merchandise, including camping equipment and gear as well as sports and leisure products, footwear, and outdoor apparel (About Academy, 2014). Headquartered in Texas, Academy operates more than 185 stores in the United States, including stores in, alphabetical order, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas (About Academy, 2014). The company has a stated corporate social responsibility commitment that is congruent with the project outlined further below.
Project Purpose and/or Business Need:
The purpose of this project is to sponsor basketball teams as part of the nationwide Midnight Basketball initiative. The first Midnight Basketball program was launched in Maryland in 1986 and has since expanded to a number of major American cities including Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit and Cleveland (Sailes, 1999). The program is structured along the lines of professional basketball and has 50 chapters across the country with tens of thousands of league members (Sailes, 1999).
The company is a natural match for this project because it offers everything basketball players and teams need to compete effectively. For example, Academy currently features:
Basketball Hoops
Basketballs
Basketball Footwear
Basketball Apparel
Basketball Accessories
Basketball Goals
Basketball Rims & Nets; and,
Duffel Bags & Sports Bags (Academy basketball team sports, 2014).
Clearly, encouraging more young people to participate in basketball through sponsorship of a Midnight Basketball league and the donation of basketballs, basketball equipment and accessories for the first league members will have a positive public goodwill effect, but it will also generate additional future sales of Academy's basketballs, basketball equipment and accessories.
Moreover, basketball has become of the most popular participant sports for the nation's youth, and medical experts routinely cite the numerous health benefits of participating in sporting activities and law enforcement authorities cite the significant impact that these programs have on reducing crime, especially in inner-city communities where there is a dearth of recreational alternatives (Sheffield, 2014). For example, the professional basketball team the Memphis Grizzlies recently partnered with the Memphis Police Department's Community Outreach Program "Memphis Gun Down" and the Memphis Athletic Ministries to sponsor Midnight Basketball Tournaments at the MAM Grizzlies Athletic Center (Sheffield, 2014).
According to Sheffield, besides providing a viable alternative activity for young people on Saturday night, the Midnight Basketball program has a very pragmatic objective as well. In this regard, Sheffield notes that, "The goal of the programs is to reduce crime among teenagers during high crime hours on Saturday nights" (2014, para. 3). There are other objectives associated with the national Midnight Basketball program as well, though. For instance, Thorner (2009) reports that, "These programs use basketball as a tool to decrease the crime rate in cities by attracting youth to indoor basketball leagues. Once inside, participants are educated about health, employment and education opportunities, case management, cultural enrichment and, of course, recreation" (p. 28).
Although these objectives will also be concomitant outcomes of Academy's program, the specific project objectives for the company's Operation Midnight Basketball are described below.
Project Objectives:
The project has three overarching objectives as follows:
Develop a successful Midnight Basketball program for young men and women aged 16 to 20 years;
Implement the Midnight Basketball program in all of the states in which the company competes; and,
Operate the program successfully indefinitely.
Stakeholder Identification
Because the company has operations in 15 states, the stakeholders of this project include the taxpayers of these states because of the potential impact that the program may have on reducing inner-city crime and school drop-out rates. Likewise, the company's customers and potential customers in these states are also stakeholders because they may be influenced by the successful (or unsuccessful) outcome of the project. In addition, the company's employees in general and volunteer sponsors are important stakeholders because employee loyalty and commitment are affected by their company's brand image and they have a vested interest in ensuring a positive outcome. Finally, the young people who will actually participate in the Midnight Basketball league and their families are important stakeholders because they will be most directly affected. In this regard, Niskanen (2009) emphasizes that, "Both the perpetrators and victims of crime increasingly are concentrated among minority groups in the inner cities. Over time, the two conditions most strongly correlated with higher reporting of crime are the unemployment rate for teenage males" (p. 23).
Work Break-Down Structure
The work break-down structure for Operation Midnight Basketball consists of two factors, (1) the communications plan that will be used to promote and administer the project and (2) team coaching and mentorship as illustrated in Figure 1 below.
Operation Midnight Basketball
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