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
• On the other hand, the purpose of the business is to make
money, so policy and management decisions should never
obstruct this without good reasons.
• Managers must be allowed to exercise business judgements and
take risks, often at speed – when they make deals, set charges,
make investments, manage debt etc – and not necessarily be
limited to a more cautious third sector approach.
• Beware of the appealing high moral view that business is
unrestrained and potentially corrupt, and the third sector always
looks after money well; sometimes it doesn’t.
Bloody-minded leaders: One of the great joys of social enterprise
activities is that it is sometimes possible to build sustainable
enterprises with apparently hopeless trading ideas and no
business knowledge – through sheer bloody mindedness and
commitment. Then it is a matter of strong personal leadership
(which is dealt with in Chapter 8). But you usually don’t need to
dig far in these cases to find that ambitious entrepreneurship and
a drive to make money are the factors driving success.
• If you are really concerned about the ethics of money making,
maybe you should stand aside.
Should we gamble with other people’s money? Most new
business start ups fail within two or three years, including many
well planned ones where the proprietors seemed to know what
they were doing. So should you be gambling with money which
belongs to other people – public funds, community resources, or
the assets of charities set up to benefit others? There’s no right
answer. But if this question bothers you, your approach may be
over-cautious. If you safeguard money too carefully, you may not
be very good at making more of it.
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