A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

It’s an idea, but is it business? A guide to third sector trading
1: Getting
started
2: First steps 3: Business
planning
4: Legal and
governance
5: Funding
and
resourcing
6: Financial
controls
7: Managing
growth
8: Management
and
governance
9: Social
enterprise
10: Sources
of support
− other income generating activities which may be successful in
themselves, but are being bled financially by the key project
and by the need to fund the management team
− a core management team which is grant funded separately
or as part of the social activities – and whose vulnerability
could bring the whole organisation down if support for it is
withdrawn
− staff and volunteer goodwill but not necessarily good practice
• A model for sustainability: Not everyone can achieve all
these characteristics, but becoming more sustainable involves
a shift to:
− recognising a new central role for the more vibrant, resilient,
profitable and promising of the existing trading activities
− recognising the potential to charge for existing free services
− retaining the cherished activity which gives the organisation
its social and ethical heart, but giving it a new place – where
it faces the same economies and demands to generate income
as everything else, but where its more modest role leaves it
less exposed
− new ‘add on’ projects and activities which can be developed
at any time (and closed if they do not work or when funding
runs out) but which do little to threaten the sustainable core.
− fewer large ‘indispensable’ grants
− fewer large irreplaceable contracts
− a management and administrative core for the organisation
which if at all possible is actually generating money as well
as spending it on expensive staff (this could include regular
income from building rents, or selling senior staff time and
expertise through consultancies)
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