Business planning
A practical guide to creating a business plan
Why make a business plan?
Many small charities and community groups only create business plans when funders require them. However, formally documenting your organization's plans offers significant benefits beyond satisfying grant requirements:
Ensures collective leadership - Keeps the entire board of trustees in charge rather than just a few individuals
Provides direction - Helps your organization move forward purposefully rather than simply drifting
Encourages innovation - Creates space to consider new ideas and approaches
Prompts improvement - Identifies activities or services that aren't working well
Creating your business plan
The planning process
While one person may handle the actual writing, effective business planning should be collaborative:
Arrange a meeting with all interested parties for an open discussion about the organization's future.
Include trustees, volunteers, staff, service users, and potentially funders.
Identify common aims and priorities emerging from these discussions.
Draft a proposal based on this input.
Circulate the draft for comments and feedback.
Present the revised plan to your board of trustees for formal adoption.
Remember: The final responsibility for approving the plan rests with your trustees.
What to include
Keep your plan concise—shorter documents are more likely to be read and used. If a longer document is unavoidable, include an executive summary highlighting key points.
1. Introduction
Purpose of the document
Intended audience
Consultation process used
Document contents
Executive summary of key points
2. Context
Description of the environment your organisation operates in
Current issues affecting your sector
Overview of other available services
Relevant developments in local or national policy
3. Your organisation today
Brief history
Summary of current activities and services
Organisational structure (trustees, staff, volunteers)
SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)
Current financial position (reserves, income, expenditure)
4. Needs assessment
Analysis of needs for your existing services
Identification of unmet needs your organisation could address
5. Long-term goals (3-5 years)
Services you plan to provide
Resources required (people, premises, equipment)
Organizational structure needed
Desired impact and outcomes
6. Short-term goals (next 12 months)
Specific steps to be taken
Priorities among these actions
Responsibilities (who will do what)
Timelines for completion
7. Financial projections
Detailed budget for the next 12 months
Less detailed projections for years 2-3 (or 5)
Funding strategy and income generation plans
8. Monitoring and review process
How progress will be tracked and reported
How trustees will oversee implementation
Schedule for reviewing and updating the plan
The rolling plan approach
One challenge with business planning is the difficulty of predicting the future, especially for grant-dependent organisations. A "rolling plan" approach can help keep your planning relevant:
Conduct an annual review of your business plan.
Update the full document each year, maintaining the same time horizon (e.g., create a new 3-year plan each year).
This keeps your plan current despite changing circumstances.
While this requires additional effort, it prevents disconnect between plans and reality.
Getting started
Some organisations avoid planning because of funding uncertainties. However, even an imperfect plan provides focus and ensures trustee oversight. Without planning, organisations tend to drift or become dominated by a few individuals.
If you need assistance developing your business plan or would like feedback on a draft, please contact us for support.
Further support
If you need any help with our resources, feel free to contact us. We are happy to explain them and offer training. We can even redesign the tools a bit, perhaps expand them or develop new features, because these resources are fairly basic tools and they're not designed for everyone.
You may need to amend the tools yourself a little bit to suit your individual needs as an organisation, and we would encourage you to adapt them and make the resources work for you.
We hope you enjoy them and find them useful. Providing free advice and resources helps us achieve our own charitable goal, which is to help organisations run themselves more efficiently and effectively.
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