¶ … 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

Communications
2. Team Coaching and Mentorship

1.2 Launch Social Media Networks and Assign Managers

2.1 Coordinate Staff Volunteers

1.2.1 Facebook

2.1.1 Recruit volunteers

1.2.2 Twitter

2.1.2 Assign volunteers

1.2.3 YouTube

2.1.3 Manage volunteers

Figure 1. Work break-down structure for Operation Midnight Basketball

Estimated Time

The total amount of time required to develop, design, coordinate and implement "Operation Midnight Basketball is 6 months divided as follows:

1. Develop and design the project: 1 month.

2. Coordinate the project with affected stakeholders, recruit staff volunteers, assign social medial network managers and formulate marketing messages: 3 months

3. Implement the project: 2 months.

Estimated Budget

The projects estimated budget is set forth in Table 1 below.

Table 1

Estimated budget for implementing Operation Midnight Basketball

Item

Estimated Cost

Academy executive leadership team salaries allocated to project

$15,000

Three full-time social media network managers @ $2,500/month X 6 months

$45,000

Administrative costs (photographic copies, binders, miscellaneous office supplies and staff refreshments for project meetings)

$12,000

Two part-time administrative support staff @ $20/hour X 85 hours / month X 6 months

$10,200

Office space and equipment (desks, utilities, computers, servers, photocopier machine, telephones and mobile devices and contract support for staff members)

$25,000

Donated basketballs, equipment and apparel

$150,000

Total

$257,200

Project Schedule

The tentative 6-momth project implementation schedule for Operation Midnight Basketball is set forth in Table 2 below.

Table 2

Tentative project schedule for implementing Operation Midnight Basketball

ACTIVITIES/TASKS

TIME (MONTHS): 2015

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

1

Conduct preliminary research concerning the Midnight Basketball initiative and identify needs.

X

2

Draft program guidelines

X

X

3

Circulate draft program guidelines for feedback

X

4

Finalize, publish and distribute program to Academy stores

X

5

Design social media network interfaces and content

X

6

Write press releases announcing the launch of the project

X

7

Publish social media network pages and content

X

8

Recruit project participants (ongoing after Apr)

X

X

X

9

Officially begin Operation Midnight Basketball

X

Communications Plan

The most effective communications plan to reach the targeted young people will be a social media network campaign using the three most popular services, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Hahn, 2011). Social media networks have been used for similar initiatives in recent years to good effect by capitalizing on the types of communications media that are being most frequently used by young people in the United States today, with Facebook being used by at least 87%, Twitter by 71% and YouTube by 44% of American youths (Hahn, 2011). Moreover, many local co-branded businesses that may want to cosponsor such an initiative also use these three social media networks as well (Hahn, 2011).

Each social media network will be assigned a manager who will be responsible for designing and maintaining the site, including posting new original content and updates concerning Operation Midnight Basketball and special events and league tournaments that are designed to promote the program. The social media network managers will also be responsible for responding to user-generated feedback and ensuring that problems are addressed in a timely fashion and inappropriate user-generated content is not allowed to remain on the site. In this regard, Hahn emphasizes that, "Once a social media campaign begins, it must provide constant feedback and interaction. Great marketing ideas and campaigns via social media platforms make for a good beginning but a company must follow through and provide interaction and feedback over the long-term" (2011, p. 130).

The communications plan will also include scrolling promotional material concerning the social media networks at the bottom of the screen on the company's current television advertisements and concise information about the launch of the initiative and the beginning date(s). By developing a coordinated communications plan, Academy will be better able to reach its targeted audience of young people aged 16 to 20 years who are interested in participating in a formal basketball league.

In addition, the communications plan will also highlight the free basketballs, basketball equipment and accessories being donated to the first league members in order to generate increased "buzz" on their social media networks. This approach is congruent with the guidance provided by Siegal and Crawford (2009) who report, "Recently, we have heard about the success of 'midnight basketball' in reducing violence. This indicates that participation in sports has been and continues to be attractive to youth, and that such involvement can and should be used as means through which positive behaviors are reinforced and appropriate values instilled" (p. 11). Notwithstanding the positive outcomes that have been achieved with the national Midnight Basketball initiative, there are some risks involved that the company must take into account in…