Business Plan Competition Questions/Concerns
Overall, a very organized and well thought progress report. I feel like the report offered the other team members of La Ceiba a very comprehensive outline to your project and goals. With that, there are a few questions I have for members of BPC about the project:
1) As a member of the loan team, there was great mention of our working together in the future– and I even noticed some of the deadlines for our communication have passed. Now that the loan team is finishing up Personal Loan Regulations, what is your planned role in the discussion with the loan team about the new Business Loan Program?
2) I found the section on the judging of the BPC extremely vague. While it would be ideal to have members of other organizations judge the competition, how realistic is this goal? What incentives to employees of other organizations have to work with La Ceiba? How can you get them to commit to a program that is still unfinished, or rather, to an organization that does not yet even have an established mission statement? Just something to think about.
3) Others have mentioned transparency and monitoring the winner. I believe it was CPayne who mentioned that Ana is uncomfortable with dealing with the men of the community, and from your PR (and my own PR for that matter), it seems like some of us at La Ceiba rely very heavily on communication with Ana. How does she feel about opening the competition to men? Ana is the loan officer, should she assume the responsibility of monitoring the BPC as well? Is it unfair of La Ceiba to put this burden on her? She does so much for us already… I’d be interested in her take on the matter. Or, is there an alternative? If it was discussed, I also missed it. How are we going to monitor and enforce the correct use of funds in this program, and can we do it independently of Ana’s help?
I’m looking forward to seeing the project evolve and all its progress. Well witten PR.
I agree that the judging section is vague. Determining qualified judges, petitioning them, assembling the judge panel, and successfully organizing their meetings to produce results may be quite difficult. Are we hoping they will volunteer their services because they see the merits of this competition? How much of a time commitment are we asking them for? Will we have any say in who our money goes to? Will the judges have certain criteria they are looking for (that we provide?) or will each be making entirely subjective decisions? These are some of the questions I have as I ponder how the judging process will play out.