A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

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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 7.4 Online trading Community organisations and charities working in disadvantaged communities or rural areas and those serving widely dispersed communities of interest have historically experienced difficulties in reaching customers. If they make or sell things their markets have been limited and their aspirations necessarily modest. The internet is changing this. Powys CIC, trading under the name Ten Green Bottles, is an enterprise based in New Radnor in rural Powys producing goods made from recycled glass. It is an environmental organisation working to find ways to make use of waste materials, and it provides training for unemployed people, people with mental health problems and people with learning disabilities. Its striking range of jewellery, tableware and ornaments is sold on line on a professionally designed site which makes the business virtually indistinguishable from a conventional private sector operation – enabling the enterprise to reach customers all over the UK. The Ten Green Bottles site is at www.greenglassmountain.com. This section describes some of the issues which third sector trading organisations need to consider if they want to take advantage of the massive potential of online trading. 188
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 What’s involved in online trading? New but not newfangled: Online trading is no more complicated than running a conventional shop. But it’s a relatively new way of doing things, so the practicalities may seem unfamiliar to those who have not used this form of selling before. Even so, huge numbers of people are regular customers of sites such as eBay and Amazon, so there’s really nothing newfangled about this way of doing business. And most people in business today do not find it difficult to take the simple first steps of advertising their goods and services to potential customers by email. The basics: If you are interested in online trading, here’s what you need to get to grips with: • basic decisions about how interactive and self-contained the online trading experience will be for customers • basic regulations governing the way online trade is carried out • setting up and maintaining the website where the trading will take place • systems for responding to orders • marketing and promotion to make the business work. Contracts: Contracts with customers on the internet are necessarily different from those reached face-to-face or conventionally in writing. The regulations and the software you use mean that it is fairly clear what you need to do and how you will operate in practice. Charities: • The trading name: It is important that trading organisations make it clear on their web site exactly which organisation their customers will be dealing with. If it’s a subsidiary trading company you must operate under this name rather than that of the parent charity. • Donations: It is good practice to keep the trading facilities quite separate from any online giving arrangements to avoid confusion for users. Organisational capacity: The fact that setting up a site is fairly easy also means that third sector organisations may be tempted to start online shops before they have developed the capacity to run them properly. Don’t risk it. There is too much which can go wrong. • Attention to detail: It is just as easy on line – perhaps even easier – to alienate your customers with poor presentation, misleading information, out-of-date shop windows, late deliveries and generally poor service as in face-to-face trading. The web is a minefield of infuriatingly outdated information, and you won’t get return customers if your site is contributing to it. 189
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