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 • But remember that crude targets will be less meaningful if, for instance, a sustainable enterprise chooses to run a large new grant funded project. This may be a sign of its mature capacity to carry on a business while supporting new and peripheral activity, not an indication of sinking back into grant dependency. • The risks of inappropriate assessments: In reality, there is as yet no reliable way to predict the balance between earned and non-earned income, and it remains a relatively crude measure of progress. A serious danger could arise if funders begin to set their own targets for the proportion of earned income without taking into consideration the other factors which contribute to an enterprise’s sustainability. 216
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 8.3 Getting the staffing right If management and staffing issues are not deal with effectively the transition from grant-funded community project to trading enterprise could be disastrous, as this real-life example shows. A substantial community-based regeneration organisation in Wales was faced with the closure of its childcare nursery project when grant funding was drastically cut. The nursery was designated a trading activity, which would need to become sustainable from fees and contracts and to run as a business if it was going to survive. But the nursery staff could not shake off the inefficiencies of the former grant-funded regime. Despite careful planning, staff retraining, financial targets, persuasion and eventually threats by the chief executive, the nursery became increasingly unsustainable. In a last ditch attempt to save the project, new flexible staffing arrangements and changes to pay and conditions were introduced. Several of the former workers refused to accept the new regime and resigned immediately, allowing a fresh staff team to be appointed. Within weeks the enterprise was starting to hit its financial targets, with prospects of being a sustainable enterprise. A new type of employment When jobs depend on it…: If workers have suddenly been moved from being grant funded to being income generators without actually changing what they do, the change may not be at all obvious to them. Telling them that their jobs quite literally depend on how effective they are at earning money may not be enough. In this and in many other situations, a more fundamental change of culture may be needed. Differences when changing from non-trading organisations: A number of new factors may come into play when jobs in grantfunded organisations have to become self-supporting. You should take nothing for granted, and look carefully at: • how paid jobs are defined • how staff are recruited • what experience and attitudes are needed • training arrangements 217
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A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

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