Case Study 1 — RYCC Writes (and Tests) Its Executive Summary
Composite, for teaching. RYCC and the Hartwell Family Foundation are illustrative.
The Situation
Denise Okafor must write the executive summary that opens RYCC's proposal to the Hartwell Family Foundation. She has done the strategy (Chapters 1–5) and knows this two pages may be the only part the foundation's board reads. Her first instinct, born of pride and anxiety, is to open with RYCC's story — four years of dedicated work, the kids who love the program. This chapter tells her to resist that instinct and lead with the funder's problem instead.
Applying the Chapter
She leads with the need, not the organization. Denise rewrites her opening from "RYCC is a dedicated nonprofit founded in 2022..." to "In our neighborhood, fewer than one in ten middle-schoolers has access to computer-science education, even as the regional economy adds tech jobs faster than it can fill them." The first version asked the board to admire RYCC; the second makes them care about a problem that is squarely Hartwell's mission. The organization's story moves to paragraph three, where it answers "can they do it?" rather than opening the summary.
She builds the five moves. Need (the quantified, mission-aligned digital-skills gap) → project (expand from one school to three, 90 students, twice weekly, one year) → organization (four-year track record, school partnerships, ready to grow) → outcomes (90 students with demonstrable skills, 80% completion, half progressing toward tech pathways) → request (\$50,000, tied directly to those 90 students and that expansion). Each paragraph is short, ties back to Hartwell's mission, and carries a number.
She tunes the register for a foundation. Because Hartwell is a relationship-driven family foundation (Chapter 2), Denise writes warmly — the need gets a human face alongside the statistic, the close looks toward partnership and sustainability — and she leans on Hartwell's own priority language ("community-rooted," "opportunity for youth") that she decoded back in Chapter 2.
The Two-Page Test
Before submitting, Denise runs the two-page test on a stranger: a friend who works in a different field and knows nothing about RYCC. She asks him to read only the summary and tell her back the six things. He nails five — but stumbles on the outcomes ("you'll serve 90 kids, but... what changes for them?"). The test has found a real gap: Denise's outcomes paragraph listed outputs (students served, sessions held) more than outcomes (skills gained, pathways entered). She revises to foreground the measurable changes, and a second reader passes all six. The stranger test caught exactly what Denise, the insider, could not see — because she knew what the numbers meant and he didn't.
The Payoff
Denise's final summary leads with Hartwell's problem, walks cleanly through the five moves, ties every paragraph to the mission, names measurable outcomes and a clear ask, and passes the two-page test with a true stranger. It is the script Hartwell's program officer will perform for the board — and Denise has made sure that script makes the project sound like an obvious yes. The thirty-nine other summaries in the stack mostly led with their organizations and softened their asks; RYCC's leads with the funder's mission and names exactly what \$50,000 buys.
Discussion Questions
- Denise's instinct was to open with RYCC's story. Why is that instinct so common, and why does the chapter insist on overriding it?
- The stranger test caught an outputs-vs-outcomes gap Denise couldn't see. Why are insiders systematically blind to this kind of gap, and what does that imply about who should test your summary?
- How did decoding Hartwell's priority language back in Chapter 2 pay off in the register of this summary?