27 Instructions for Organizational Summaries

In order for you to understand your audience, an important part of this course, you first have to understand who you are and from where you are writing. I would like you to choose two organizations you have been involved in and analyze several aspects of the organizations, including types of activities conducted there, types of writings used there and connections with other organizations.

Organizations can include jobs you’ve had, civic and non-profit clubs you’ve been a part of, church and school organizations, or teams and musical groups you’ve been involved in, just to name a few. You can choose organizations that you are currently involved in or ones you belonged to previously. But you should have a comfortable familiarity with the comings and goings of the organization: for the next 15 weeks, you will be representing that organization through written communication.

Study the following Organizational Summary example. Use a format that is clear for you audience and highlights the major points you want to highlight. Remember, you need to write two organizational summaries for this assignment. But before you begin, remember to try the practice exercise in the next document in this module, “Parallelism Worksheet.