A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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 2.6 Should you be running a business, anyway? Third sector trading activities are often started by people with little or no business experience who are not very interested in making money. Then they try to put poor trading ideas into practice and wonder why their community café is a failure. This chapter deals with the simple first steps of deciding whether you really want to run a business. Understanding business: Before you plan any type of trading it is important to understand what you are getting into and why. Some of the main issues which your group will need to deal with are: • recognising the value of a businesslike approach even for smallscale community-based trading, and • accepting the necessity for a serious commercial approach to development, big or small • overcoming anti-business prejudices in your group, your parent organisation or the wider community • being prepared for the difficulties and sheer hard work of running a business • evaluating trading ideas thoroughly before you start • understanding the common ground and the differences between conventional businesses and enterprise activity (no, they are not the same, no matter what some advisors say). Time for a reality check: It’s time to take a close look at what you are thinking of doing, to make sure you are not about to make a seriously painful mistake. The issue now is whether you are prepared to make necessary emotional adjustments, practical concessions and difficult judgements necessary to give you the best chance of success, and to avoid the most common causes of failure. So: • do you want to run a business? • can you work out what businesses to avoid? • do you really want to make money? If the answers are ‘no’, maybe you are not ready. Few questions in social enterprise development are as challenging to the way your organisation operates and relevant to your eventual success or failure, yet as apparently daft, as: ‘do you want to make money?’ The only sensible way to start is to spend some time thinking about the implications of this question for what you want to do. 40
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 Do you really want to run a business? Burying anti-business prejudices: It is possible (though much less likely than it was just a few years ago) that some members of your organisation or the community will be hostile towards or sceptical about a voluntary organisation which is planning to run a business. (You may encounter similar negativity and dubious advice, for completely opposite reasons, from members of the business community.) Bias and ignorance within the third sector – from those people for instance who argue that you should make ‘business’ subservient to ‘community’ – is one reason why the performance of third sector trading has been rather disappointing for the last 30 years. It’s time to sideline the sceptics and have confidence in what you are doing: • Don’t be ashamed of making money if your aim is to make your organisation or your community better off. • ‘Profit’ should not be a dirty word for community trading organisations – if you only aim to break even you risk the business failing completely the first time you hit a rough patch. • Business is only unethical when it’s run by unethical people. • Business activity in not necessarily incompatible with the needs of disadvantaged people and communities – an open-all-hours corner shop can easily make a greater contribution to the social and economic wellbeing of an area than a poorly used community centre. • Community based trading activity is not incompatible with ‘community development’ as some purists used to argue; in fact it can educate, raise confidence, foster skills and create opportunities for people just as effectively as conventional development work, and very often do so faster. • The complaint that businesses tend to exploit their workers is not easy to refute, especially when you are operating with your backs to the wall; but social enterprises − may offer greater worker democracy, fairer treatment, and a commitment to improving conditions and pay if and when financial circumstances allow, and − may, if all else fails, give workers reason to feel less oppressed, and sometimes even happy, when they are exploited. Hard work and small rewards: People starting out in social enterprise sometimes delude themselves that the experience will automatically be better than work in conventional business, or that their life will be much as it was while they were working for a public body or a charity. 41
Page 1 and 2: It’s an idea, but is it business?
Page 41: It’s an idea, but is it business?
Page 93 and 94:
It’s an idea, but is it business?
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
Page 191 and 192:
Page 193 and 194:
Page 195 and 196:
Page 197 and 198:
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204:
Page 205 and 206:
Page 207 and 208:
Page 209 and 210:
Page 211 and 212:
Page 213 and 214:
Page 215 and 216:
Page 217 and 218:
Page 219 and 220:
Page 221 and 222:
Page 223 and 224:
Page 225 and 226:
Page 227 and 228:
Page 229 and 230:
Page 231 and 232:
Page 233 and 234:
Page 235 and 236:
Page 237 and 238:
Page 239 and 240:
Page 241 and 242:
Page 243 and 244:
Page 245 and 246:
Page 247 and 248:
Page 249 and 250:
Page 251 and 252:
Page 253 and 254:
Page 255 and 256:
Page 257 and 258:
Page 259 and 260:
Page 261:
show all

A guide to third sector trading - WCVA

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?